


Miracle Aligner

by dexterously



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hospital, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2018-08-07
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:27:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 29,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11028633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dexterously/pseuds/dexterously
Summary: He grasps Naruto’s hand, which was closed in an unyielding grip until the touch of Sasuke eases his flexed fingers. His fingertips drift over Naruto’s knuckles, a stroke deliberately slow, lingering. He thinks idly, then,this leaves the door open for a shitload of misunderstandings, the intent he engraves in this inchmeal movement. He has no ounce of care in his mute, stupid persona.Or: this is Uchiha Sasuke, M.D., emergency room’s personal Jesus. He performs a miracle here and there, yet somehow he can’t save himself from the fall from grace (or so he thinks) that is loving his best friend.





	1. Under the folding branches

**Author's Note:**

> I said: "Against my better judgement I'm going to write a Naruto AU–" and here we are. 
> 
> Unbetaed, all mistakes and awkward phrasing in english, not my native language, are my own.

Sasuke’s pager goes off inside one of the pockets of his lab coat; the beeping it does absently gets to him while he’s fishing out his keys from somewhere inside any other pocket. He pats and checks himself, presses his hands against his pants for the key’s outline. “Damn,” he mutters, just as the pager emits another sound. He makes a face.

There’s only one person he knows would try to contact him via paging when he’s deliberately ignoring said character’s other methods of getting to him. The keys do appear, saved in the same place he uses for his stethoscope, and he unlocks the door, stepping inside his office. Inside awaits him a whole level of unkemptness (some downright disaster, Sakura says, that’s _her_ wording anyway) that he doesn’t fully acknowledge because his pager chirps in a third time. Sasuke sighs, casting a glance over a specific stack of paper. A bulge protrudes a few sheets upwards. His phone, and the incoming call making the screen lit up is revealed after the sheets are set aside. At least this time he could remember where he put the thing.

“ _Oh, great timing,_ ” a voice immediately says once he answers the call.

“Dr. Uzumaki, why are you calling me in my working hours?” Sasuke replies in lieu of a greeting.

Naruto scoffs. It’s been enough of a Monday to Sasuke that he feels it’s justified his grimace this early. “ _You need to stop calling me that, like it’s a joke._ ”

“Once it stops being a joke,” Sasuke says, putting the phone on speaker. He sets it on top of the papers it had been hiding under, while he takes care of everything that looks out of place over his desk, “It’s a good icebreaker for the new interns. It makes them laugh.”

“ _A trip to Sakura’s for you would make me laugh,_ ” Naruto grumbles, then, but his voice doesn’t have a single drop of threat. “ _I’ve been calling you for ages, man. What if it was an emergency?_ ”

Sasuke collects the empty cardboard cups hoarding part of his desk, pilling them before throwing the small heap in a plastic bag. “Do you have a pen on you? Write down 9-1-1, I think they’ll answer you.”

That makes Naruto snort. “ _You’re my emergency number._ ”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire—”

“ _Shut up. Anyway, don’t get me distracted, this is an important call,_ ” Naruto starts, “ _Did you eat breakfast yet? Sakura told me you just ended your forty-eight-hour shift._ ”

“I think I had a bag of gummies somewhere between my third and fourth coffee,” he says, smirking when he hears Naruto groan. He thinks idly about the cardboard cups. He doesn’t even know how many of those he actually had.

“ _Sugar and coffee, bravo,_ ” Naruto says, clapping. Sasuke imagines him looking like a fool with his phone clutched between his shoulder and ear, for the sake of his sarcasm. “ _You’re a very reliable representation of health._ ”

“Thank God,” Sasuke says, “Can you imagine if I added ramen to that diet? It’d throw off the balance.”

“ _That’s your way of saying you don’t want ramen as breakfast? Man, my heart,_ ” Naruto replies. There’s a telltale elevator _ping_ on his side of the line that notifies Sasuke his friend wasn’t going to take any negatives from his part. It doesn’t leave to Sasuke a chance to flee, either, not that his stomach is interested in doing so.

“And your arteries. But, would you sacrifice ramen for me? Oh,” Sasuke fakes a gasp, the mirth behind his words belaying his surprise, “I don’t think I’m ready for those heights in commitment.”

Naruto’s snicker sounds crisp in the call, and Sasuke realizes just how close he is by the echo of his laughter floating to his office. Just as he’s brushing away a few crumbs (that will surely reappear because Naruto ate like he owned the table), Naruto opens the door, sparing any knock, like he always does.

“Believe it or not, we’re skipping ramen today,” his friend says right away entering, “I brought you some juice. I know, real, unprocessed juice? I think it’ll poison you.”

“That’s not a first,” Sasuke points out, getting a chair free from a few books piled over it. Naruto puts a groceries’ recyclable bag over the desk, taking the seat without giving it a once over, which says a lot about how much trust Naruto puts into the level of cleanness the chair had. That, or he remembered to bring a spare lab coat this time.

“It was _one time_ ,” Naruto winces, detangling the bag, “I didn’t know the soup was stale!”

“You were so far into a congestion you couldn’t smell a fire,” Sasuke tells him, “Let alone cook.”

He makes a gesture of grabbing something from the bag, but Naruto smacks his hand. Sasuke glares at him, and the blond retorts with a grin. “Makes me wonder how in earth you accepted my food.”

Sasuke crosses his arms, now sitting across Naruto. He glowers until Naruto caves, rolls his eyes and passes him a brown bakery bag. It’s warm where he touches it, not scalding. A corner of his mouth tugs upwards despite himself. “Exhaustion. A moment of weakness. Blindness, a fail in the olfactory system. Choose your favorite.”

“I’d say you were hungry and in need,” Naruto says, getting him a glass bottle next. Orange juice, Sasuke judges by the looks of it.

Sasuke uncaps the bottle and takes a sip, mockingly saying afterwards, “Thanks, Naruto, you’re a lifesaver.”

“No biggie,” Naruto plays along. He rolls the brown paper bag around his filled biscuit and takes a mouthful. He’s munching as he says, “But your people call me doctor. More fitting, yeah? And humble.”

Not even Sasuke’s frequent complaints, after all those years, could give Naruto good manners. “Swallow before you speak,” Sasuke drawls, grateful at least that the blond stopped showing him the inside of his mouth as retaliation. “And humility? Finally, something you learned from me.”

Naruto gets a fit of coughing in the midst of his laughing. Serves him right. He sing songs, “ _Hangin' on a telephone wire—_ ”

 ———

Sasuke blatantly alienates himself from terms like humility, he’s been known as one of the best and he maintains it that way, even as lonely as it gets the top sometimes. But that is the outcome of filtering obstacles that weaver his grasp; this is a saying that goes deep in his family, one that stuck with him, too. It stood up like an incisive idiosyncrasy (he liked to call it benign), that an Uchiha would always disregard themselves from the idea of projecting an inaccurate, static figure. Sasuke early on raised a contrast from most type of hypothesis and beliefs that concerned him: he exceeded them or refused to be represented by them, showing an identity that lacked childishness, or a redundant attitude.

With time his interest in settling an impression, the one that makes you wonder what people think of you, slowed down. He always strives for _showing people how it’s done_ , this much is true, but caring for what those people thought of his proceedings stopped being in the front of his mind, falling somewhere lesser in relevance. Sasuke has a voracious nerve, he’s an uninterrupted and almost striking vision, when he wears his intentions with an aggressiveness not quite invasive, yet odd— dauntless in his convictions and resolutely at peace with the reality that he always wants to be the best.

One to misinterpret things was Naruto. Right away, it made things with the blond just about a goddamn wreckage, and no one exactly knows how they are, now, the best of friends, and a duo of comrades, out of such a different context like their first encounters. One to comprehend things, too, was Naruto, which made Sasuke leave and turn back and be _dragged_ back in a strange relationship of sorts with the blond that somehow keeps going through the years, not shining with some spectacular start or holding a lineal progressive evolution— God knows the first years at the faculty went a little backwards, kicking off, shutting down, staggering, but Naruto particularly never relented and ultimately, Sasuke thinks, he grew a spot the size of this annoying, unprofessional friend of his.  

Sasuke knows it raises doubts and bets in equal parts, his younger, more weary around Naruto self, would bet against lasting a year calling this boy something along the lines of friend, or acquaintance. At that time it was laughable at best and disconcerting at worst, that two temperaments running at such lengths of opposition could manage and critically maintain a middle ground in where to fall, find companionship, to get back to. His younger self would bet for a lack of that within a year, but after that he couldn’t be as sure anymore. Now it’s laughable at best how Naruto seems to fit inside the picture Sasuke claimed he couldn’t have the right for space into. In the best case, it’s funny that he would contrast the Uchiha in the most maddeningly of ways, a startling difference that more than once put them on opposite poles with miles from each other, and nevertheless Naruto stood beside him like a parallel force where and when it mattered. After all, Naruto never cared exactly what people thought, too, not even what Sasuke did, until he got around the idea that they weren’t so much a walking discrepancy but just worked in sync— when it mattered.

It’s disconcerting at worst, being lonely at the top, yet finding haven in a person that fights for his goals with the likes of which so different at how Sasuke is used to fight. The similarities are there, their words are different but hold the same meaning, and they held the same goal, just casted different lights over it.

It makes Sasuke frown, it’s laughable at best, when Naruto smiles and looks triumphant. It’s disconcerting at worst, when Naruto thinks Sasuke is not watching him smile, but he does.

———

In Naruto’s office there’s a wall covered in a series of firsts, photographs framed and hanging in no specific order. Years after, they hang one in whatever space they fancy or find in where the photograph fits nicest, and the wall’s starting to look a little cluttered because Naruto cannot seem to stop putting pictures there of stuff that, according to him, were a _first_ to happen. It makes the painting and cleaning a royal whole ordeal of bothersome work, but it holds a symbolic status since Naruto was given that office and Sasuke reluctantly admits that he, too, has grown used to the pictures. Everyone’s got their favorite, Sakura’s fond of the picture of Naruto’s first time holding the baby he helped delivering during his rotations at the Obstetrics and gynecology, the baby crying and Naruto, absorbed in such a emotional moment, crying too. There’s Hinata’s favorite, a proud Kiba walking from his first kneecap replacement surgery, having told his performance leveled about the specialist’s. A lot of people find themselves giggling like fools at one where Sasuke is wearing a _Power Rangers_ pattern scrubs after losing a bet against Ino. And the one his gaze lingers each time, the picture of Naruto and him grinning broadly, cap and gown and all, holding their diplomas under the folding branches of a three known in their faculty for being as old as time.

Sasuke is staring at the wall once again, in a nondescript Tuesday that he finds he doesn’t actually have any recollection of before Naruto complained it was _his_ turn to buy breakfast, waking him up from the nap he was busy taking and suddenly recalls: His day’s supposed to start in a few hours, he’s still in the hospital, having fallen asleep there, his shift ended after midnight, and he was so tired he didn’t even realize Monday, predictably, morphed to Tuesday.

He’s trying to say all of this to Naruto, as an explanation to why he can’t get up to grab breakfast despite being a thing they do almost religiously, but it comes out like a pitiful: “Aarrgggh.”

Somehow Naruto doesn’t understand. Sasuke wonders why he’s even bothering. “C’mon, teme, you’re not getting away with this,” he says, and Sasuke almost gets cross-eyed while looking at his friend, whose face inches close to his, “Did you went home before crashing here? No, stupid question. You’d be crashed in your own bed. _Sasuke_.”

Naruto’s berating tone access via one ear, and is out by the other one. He feels groggy and his brain is taking its sweet time falling again into its usual consciously functioning state. Sasuke blinks slowly, his body chasing away the numb feeling of sleep. This near, he can see how pale Naruto’s eyelashes are, long and curled, they’re just a pitch below transparency. “You have a woman’s eyelashes,” Sasuke manages, though it sounds not exactly like he wanted to.

Something passes through Naruto’s blue eyes, a thing almost _physical_ ; yet it cannot be a trick that the light pulled off. Not this close. Then shadows cast over the blond’s eyes as he closes them, stepping back. “You sure know how to talk your way inside a man’s heart,” Naruto raises a brow.

Sasuke rearranges himself in the sofa he’s currently lying over, by some miracle throw at him, his neck isn’t stiff. “Thought I got that covered years ago.”

“Yeah, sure,” Naruto dismisses, “How many hours have you been in here, Dr. Uchiha?”

Oh, _it’s on_. Sasuke knows too how this diplomatic, condescending little act needs to be play. “I ended my shift and deemed necessary that I stayed in the hospital, Dr. Uzumaki.”

A muscle tightens in Naruto’s right cheek, Sasuke knows he’s clenching his jaw, whether to hold a laugh or keep his face clear of annoyance, he can’t tell. “And why is that? ER got low tide once your time was up.”

“There were a few patients I needed to check myself,” he explains.

“Bullshit,” Naruto, unsurprisingly, is the first to crack. Sasuke smirks.

“Language, doctor,” Sasuke changes to a sitting position. He barely remembers having shrugged off his lab coat (he doesn't know why he needed to use it in the first place, if he rarely did it), which is unceremoniously throw over Naruto’s desk, along with his pager, his lintern, and his stethoscope.

“I care less and less about what you have to say to my language,” Naruto follows his line of vision, and walks towards his desk. He grabs Sasuke’s things messily. “You’re going to your house, you’ll close your curtains, and you’ll tuck yourself in bed. I won’t have you here until you _actually_ need to be here. Are we clear?”

“Crystal, mom,” Sasuke stands and makes a move to get his things, but Naruto narrows his eyes and hugs the things closer to his body, out of Sasuke’s reach. “Naruto.”

“You need to rest. You’re taking all those shifts— when was the last time you spent less than half a day here?”

Sasuke pinches the bridge of his nose. “It’s been busy, Naruto.”

“You’re not the only doctor in here,” the blond insists, “There’s a team that can work, too. You have them. And you have me.”

“I know, I know. Isn’t a bit too early to be having this chat? I thought we got it scheduled for noon,” Sasuke tries for a joke.

If anything, Naruto looks more serious. “I don’t want to repeat myself.”

That makes Sasuke pause. “So what? You’ll stop me from doing _my job_?”

“Maybe,” Naruto says at length, “Now go. And I expect to be treated to ramen for lunch, once you come back.”

“See if I care,” Sasuke mutters, taking what Naruto’s pushing into his arms. “Why are you here, anyway? I know your shift starts about an hour after mine.”

Naruto shrugs, taking a chart from his desk. “I had a hunch that you were playing at being part of the décor here, so I came to rescue you. Life-saving, remember?” he tilts his head, smiling.

That smile’s has been getting more difficult to resist to each day, but Sasuke doesn’t let himself be pulled. “Age’s making you less funny.”

“Hah, very ha.”

 ———

“Sasuke.”

He minimally flinches. Somehow, between his sandwich and his cup of jelly, he spaced out. Sakura’s chastising voice brings him back with a firm intone.

“I’m hearing, I swear,” he casually lies, driving another spoonful into his mouth. He swallows before adding: “Lying doesn’t make it better, right?”

“That much you’re right,” Sakura concedes, glaring. If looks could kill, he would be asking for a gurney as in right now. “What got you in the clouds? You at least care about when it’s a medical topic.”

Sasuke scrunches the cup in his hands. There has been an influx of brain-wreaking cases in Trauma. They’ve been tethering on code red for days, now, following the start of spring. Floor manages to stay more stuffed and without beds free more days than not. He’s been walking on blood-stained skechers for a day now, not finding the time to rush back to his house to get a spare pair. They’re not lies, but Sasuke doesn’t bother using any of them. “Itachi’s birthday is getting closer.”

Sakura crosses her arms. The movement gives the hello kitty pattern in her scrubs' top a funny face. She’s probably the only one that can put off a patterned scrubs and be a top surgeon. “Now I get why you were brooding at your jelly.”

“I wasn’t brooding,” Sasuke arches an eyebrow. Sakura mimics him. “He’s throwing another big reunion, and you can bet who’ll the center of the conversations be. Again.”

It makes Sakura laugh, at least. She tosses her hair, which was getting long enough to make a swinging flourish. “Little golden baby boy. Inching to his thirties, and not even a pretty girl in sight. It makes us all gasp.”

“I think they’re not going to buy it if I bring you again,” Sasuke muses, “Maybe Ino? Uh. No. Forget I said that.”

“That’ll make them think they got ‘Sasuke’s into blondes’ part right.” Sakura teases. She gathers the empty plates and puts Sasuke’s tray over hers, then she pushes it towards him. Sasuke absently takes it.

“ _Not funny_ , for the‒ you know what, I lost count,” he says, standing up.

“Gets less funny the more it gets true,” Sakura replies. She puts her water bottle in her front pocket, waits for Sasuke after he leaves the tray, and they exit the cafeteria together. “You can take Naruto.”

“And here I was, believing I had bad ideas,” Sasuke rolls his eyes, “But you just beat me.”

“Say all you want, but you’re running out of time,” she warns, and her green eyes lost a shred of their playfulness. “I’m just reminding you.”

Sasuke holds tight the urge to talk back. He lacks something smart to add, defeated by the concluding tone in his friend’s voice, allowing no further discussion. Sasuke knows he can fight back, but against Sakura’s assessing gaze, his odds were starting to reverse. He settles for a glare leveled to his friend’s calm stare. ****

“I need to do charts,” Sasuke says. It’s a dismissal if Sakura ever heard one.

“I’m having surgery just about now,” Sakura checks the clock attached to her wrist, “See you for lunch?”

“Yeah, sure. I’ll get ramen. Naruto’s doing.”

 ———

The slap of his gloves snap the residents out of their reverie. The man is settled over the emergency stretcher and Sasuke looms over him, lowering to check his head. He barks: “He has his nasal hairs burned. That’s a sign for what?” The two residents look briefly to each other, but they can’t snatch their eyes off the gruesome sight of a burned body, the skin of the man thoroughly damaged. “I just made a question. It’s a sign for what?”

“Burned v-vocal cords,” the woman stutters. Sasuke frowns at her, and that makes her take a deep breath before repeating, firmer this time: “Burned nasal hairs can lead us to believe that his vocal cords are this damaged, too.”

“That’s right,” Sasuke confirms, “They can swell at any given moment and close his air ways,” he looks at the other resident, a man. _A boy_ , Sasuke thinks. “You. Intubate immediately.”

The boy eases his way with the tube, clumsily managing the oropharyngeal airway, just as Sasuke holds the bag-valve, ready to use it, and continues, “Tell me an estimate of his burns.”

The woman answers, “35 percent? I’d—” but Sasuke cuts her off. “45 percent, Dr. Yashiro. Guess you cheated your way through basic math quizzes.”

She looks pissed off. Sakuke, albeit finding it laughable, doesn’t particularly care. He clenches the bag-valve. Yashiro was a short-fuse woman, drove by her hot blood. Sasuke knows the mistake in that. “Get the fluids ready and begin the replenishment. And check your notes, both of you.”

Later, he knows his words are back to bite him in the ass because both Sakura _and_ Naruto encounter him, successfully cornering him while he’s, predictably, taking a 20 min shut eye. He should have been known using Naruto’s office instead of the couch in the resting room wasn’t the best of ideas. He rubs his face with a hand, trying to get off the exhaustion, when Naruto speaks:

“Dr. Uchiha, you are _not_ nice,” he says.

“Was I ever,” Sasuke counters, looking bored. Sakura huffs.

“That poor girl. She was crying after stabilizing the patient. Kept saying she didn’t cheat, what if Dr. Uchiha thought she cheated in her faculty years, too?” Sakura tells him.

“You can’t speak to your residents that way, Sasuke. They expect motivation and knowledge, c’mon,” Naruto lectures him, his scowl deep between his brows. He’s speaking big words, the lesson he pulls out every time Sasuke ever so slightly gets a little rough on his residents. By all means, it goes right over his head.

“They’re mine, and since nobody expects me to treat them nice, I don’t have to,” he replies, closing his eyes again, “It’s my job to train them. They could be chasing anyone else’s tail, but they’re behind mine. Surely it isn’t because I’m known for patting backs.”

“They expect you to correct them and set them about the right path, not humiliate them,” Sakura retorts.

“Treat them nice,” Sasuke repeats, “That’s just a prettier way of saying it.”

Sasuke doesn’t feel the need to explain himself, but he interrupts his friends adding; “Look,” he starts, gesturing for them to let him talk, “If any of you thought that was harsh, they’re not passing this. The emergency is like that. You had your way up in surgery, Sakura. And you, Naruto, showed them the hard work that is internal medicine. But they were handled to me in ER, where _I_ work, and I can’t have a girl getting the Wallace wrong because she’ll give the wrong amount of fluids to a patient that needs accuracy. If they can’t have speed and precision, their patients will be gone for good. They won’t get to internal and they won’t get to surgery. They’ll be dead.”

He raises to Sakura’s unimpressed stare, her stance open, not even her lips pursed or tightened. She looks exactly like when she’s performing. Concentrated emerald eyes, not a single tic, not tongue-peeking; her face remains as sternness as ever. He doesn’t look at Naruto.

“Let her cry if she needs to. But I expect her to dry her face, and come back to me to get her job done right.”

 ———

The rain is a light feeling over his shoulders before Naruto shelters him under his bright orange umbrella. “Hey, you didn’t wait for me,” the blond says.

Sasuke got the fight out of him after a full day, a burning building with several injured, two car accidents, one involving a bus full of children that were brought to his wing featuring different degrees of wailing their little pulmonary system out. “I guess I’m tired,” he shrugs, slowing his stride to match Naruto’s.

A gentle mantle of white noise embraces them during long minutes. The rain pours around them, the parking lot sizzles with the indistinct sounds of life hurrying away from the rain, the pitter-patter of the water as it splashes the cars. To his right, his periphery sight catches a woman and a kid running, and he recognizes the small boy as one from the bus accident. He didn’t need anything, just was scared beyond relief, and her mom kept pestering Sasuke until he double checked his son.

He doesn’t know why he feels like saying such, but he hears himself mentioning it to Naruto in a hushed tone, one he instinctively thinks it’s right for just two under an umbrella. Naruto glances at the pair and smiles when Sasuke yawns midway in his chatting. Strangely, he doesn’t add anything except from the occasional affirmative humming that lets his friend know he’s listening.

When they reach Naruto’s car, he waits for Sasuke to open the copilot door before rushing to the driver side. Inside, the air is dry and lukewarm, but growing cold as the temperature lowers outside. Naruto starts the car and drives them out of the parking lot, into the awakening nocturnal city.

He rests his head against the window, taking in nothing and all at once that happens in the streets, cars speeding past them, people walking, shops closing. The exhaustion that clings to his bones makes his consciousness float adrift between one avenue and the other; that, and the times he looks at Naruto’s profile while he’s driving (a gold, then red, then blue hue dancing in his skin, it’s a rinse and repeat when they pass each streetlight, hypnotizing notwithstanding) are enough distraction for him to belatedly notice they’ve reach his street, and the familiar silhouettes of the mass constructed houses pass before his vision. Naruto stops at one with the turf slightly out of control. Sasuke then remembers, for the umpteenth time, that he needs to call the gardener. He’s been telling that himself everytime he walks out of his door, and back again when he crosses that threshold at the end of a journey.

“—haven’t call the gardener,” Naruto is saying, and Sasuke shifts his weight until he’s more or less sitting properly, looking back at the blond. Naruto raises his brows in a silent inquiry.

“No, I haven’t,” Sasuke says, and in a spur of honesty, adds, “I keep forgetting it.”

“’Course you do,” Naruto mumbles, turning off the engine, “You got your head busy thinking of ways to torment residents.”

It’s a halfhearted joke, but Sasuke grimaces anyway. Naruto never says things he doesn’t quite mean. “About that, Naruto. You know that I‒”

“Call them names, see if I care, Sasuke,” Naruto talks over him, “But don’t think you’d get away saying you don’t mean each thing you say.”

He sighs. Something that makes Naruto especially difficult is his bluntness, with time he managed to stop throwing his commentary filled with emotions aimlessly, when it concerns Sasuke, particularly, he somehow knows what to say to strike in a sharp, full of accurate intent. It makes Sasuke remember the days he would scoff and shrug and barely sneer in the direction of Naruto’s general nonsense, but age gave him what was his to achieve, the right to put Sasuke in place. Maybe not a right _per se_ , but he thinks it may be because of him that Naruto doesn’t ask, Naruto _knows_.

But Sasuke is too tired to deal with Naruto knowing why he says the things he says, knowing why he does the thing he does. He knows why he treats his residents like that and why he’s known among the other doctors for his cruel temperament, his small percentage of approbation. He knows why they call him _a filter._ Naruto knows why he pushes them and they better bend instead of break. He’s been having a killer headache pounding and rattling his brain for the ongoing six hours, not finding a single moment he could shoot himself a dose before a nurse would call for him. And he can’t deal with Naruto looking at him like he knows Sasuke from within, though he does.

Sasuke can’t afford letting him know that. _You can take Naruto_ , Sakura had said. _Fucking right I can, and then, what after that?_ He thinks. That’s why he didn’t dare to look at Naruto when his friends confronted him. He could have lost his footing there, his resolve, not too far to apologize, but enough to plant a seed of guilt. That’s the worst part of having a friend so assertive of him; Naruto’s words have a way to sneak past the foreground and crack at the back, where doubt and guilt rest inert, most times.

“They’re mine to take care of, Naruto,” Sasuke explains, “What’s a little push if not to make them learn how to walk.”

Naruto looks unimpressed. “You just want them to run away from you.”

“Yeah, that too,” Sasuke says, humorless. “I’ll leave the gardener a message, see if they can get around before I have to go back.”

The blond starts the car again. “What time you have to be back?”

“After breakfast,” Sasuke replies, stepping outside, “You?”

Naruto looks thoughtful for a moment. “Right after you. I’ll give you a ride.”

Sasuke closes the door, but Naruto rolls down the window, yelling: “Grow up, Sasuke! Tell them to improve instead of pulling at their pigtails.”

“You pulled mine, and look where it brought us,” Sasuke yells back.

“Bastard!”

“Come say it to my face, asshole!”

 ———

“There you go, Mr. Woods,” Sasuke says, cutting the end of the stitches, “Patched up, ready to mingle.”

“You got it right, kid,” Mr. Wood smiles, “You’ve been fixing me up more times than I like to remember.”

Sasuke rips a gauze strip and gently covers the cut, just as his glasses fall from his nose. Mr. Woods pushes them back up, and he nods his thanks. He’s sticking the gauze in place when he says, “That’s my job. And your job is leaving this dry and letting it heal on its own. No funny business.”

The man tilts his head. “You mean, can’t have fun with my girl tonight? That’s tough.”

The laugh makes Sasuke’s shoulders shake. “Tell her to get creative and not move you around, or you’ll get your second round here in my ER.”

“Now that’s something I wouldn’t like,” Mr. Woods makes a face, “Although, if that nurse of yours is involved—”

“Get a grip,” Sasuke lets the glasses fall to his chest. “Up you go, now. Before I sew your mouth shut.”

“I’ll spare that,” the man smiles easily. He jumps on a leg before carefully testing how much weight he can put on the injured one. “Thanks, Sasuke.”

He pats the man’s arm once. “Always. Get Hinata to give you a painkiller for the road, and don’t get in her nerves.”

Before Sasuke gets to his feet, though, Hinata comes to him, carrying charts. She switches her gaze between Sasuke and Mr. Woods. “These are for you, Dr. Uchiha.”

“So much a slow night they hand me from ESI-3? Jeez,” Sasuke huffs, “Where are my slaves?”

“ _Sasuke_ ,” Hinata chides softly, “Dr. Yashiro is attending a patient with a cast, and Dr. Wakefield is over a CTA.”

“At least these aren’t stuck to the hip today,” he motions for Hinata to exchange the chart he has and the ones she’s holding. “Hinata, this is Mr. Woods, he’s ready to be discharged. Get to me to sign the forms off and give him something for the pain, meanwhile.”

“I’m Daniel Woods,” the man says, “Or anyone you want, really.”

Hinata blushes and mutters her own introduction, and Sasuke leaves them to it. That man could be a walking flirt but he was benign, if not a little weak for curves. He shakes his head, settling the charts over the nurses’ board. He’s flipping through them when Sakura crosses the open swing doors and brightens when her eyes find him. “Sasuke!”

He turns his head, looking over his eyeglasses. “Queen of the knife, why are you mingling with us peasants?”  

She bows mockingly, granting a chuckle from Sasuke. “I’m searching for Konohamaru. He was supposed to assist me up there, but I closed up without him. Have you seen him?”

Sasuke feigns think it over. “Surgery resident, probably runs on redbull, little Naruto 2?” he widens his eyes, mimicking an innocent face, “Haven’t seen him up anyone’s ass today. Did you check yours?”

“For a peasant, you have a very disrespectful talk,” Sakura narrows her eyes, “His shift supposedly started twenty minutes ago, but he’s nowhere in sight.”

Sasuke returns to the sheet he was reading, replying absently: “Maybe Naruto knows. He was, I don’t know, going to eat with him? Or something like that.”

“He didn’t told me that,” then she sends Sasuke a knowing look. He sighs. “Oh, but he said it to you so you wouldn’t wait for him to get breakfast together. That’s a nice gesture.”

“You want me to read too closely into that, I won’t,” Sasuke says, closing the file, “If he passes by, I’ll let him know you were looking for him.”

“Better tell him to hide, I’m wasting my time on him.”

“Get back to your castle,” he says over his shoulder, walking towards one of the beds in the ingress’ wing, hid by a curtain. He folds it and announces, “Good morning. You must be Mr. and Mrs. Velarde, did I get it right?”

A man standing by the woman’s right side startles to his voice. “Yes, yes. That’s how it’s pronounced. And you are…?”

“Dr. Uchiha, glad to meet you,” he shakes the man’s hand, and surveys the woman, “I’m the one who’s going to be seeing you. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

“This morning I threw up twice,” the woman says, “I’ve been dizzy and having nausea since then.”

“She’s been having stomach ache all week, too,” the man adds, sounding reproachful. “Told me a little rest was all she needed, but today she woke up feeling worse and—”

“It’s okay,” Sasuke reassures them, “We’ll find out what’s happening, Mrs. Velarde. Now, you’re going to be still for me for a moment, yeah?” He approaches, gloving his hands with a pair tucked inside his scrubs’ bottom pocket, as well as a tongue depressor from the higher one. Mrs. Velarde holds her breath. “Open your mouth and flatten your tongue as much as you can.”

He bends to look closer, and a beat passes before he discards the palette. He gingerly touches the woman’s face, no movements wasted, descends her right lower eyelid, searches for any innocuous-looking haematoma. “Do you feel shortness of breath? Did you had fatigue when coming here? In the week?” Sasuke questions.

Mrs. Velarde nods shortly. “Yeah, I get tired after doing chores, even if it’s just a couple of hours.”

“I see,” he says at least. He puts on his stethoscope and cruises through the woman’s chest and upper abdomen for a brief moment. Then he pushes the sheets over her out of the way, settling it lower, in her belly. “I’m going to touch your abdomen, you’ll tell me when or if it hurts, okay?”

She nods again and remains quiet until she takes a sharp intake of air, her face scrunching in the obvious sign of pain. “There, it hurts there.”

Sasuke steps back, taking the chart he brought with him and writing a few things down. “We’ll give you something for the nausea, and shortly there’ll be someone to draw blood for a few tests. I’ll ask for an ultrasound, just to see closer at the source of the pain. I’ll get back to you once I have the results, meanwhile you ought to rest.”

“Okay, Dr. Uchiha,” Mrs. Velarde accepts, “Thank you.”

He tilts his head. “My pleasure, ma’am,” Sasuke closes the curtain behind him, coming to a bleary-eyed Ino, who’s looking sightlessly at nothing, her head supported by her hand. He begins, “You look like shit.”

Ino chuckles, but her reaction lacks her usual energy. She looks brittle and slightly worn out. “Not even our personal Jesus can look good after a forty-eight-hour shift.”

Sasuke doesn’t raise to the bat. “Bed six needs ultrasound, hepatic profile and blood panel. She got yellowing in the sclera and has pain in right hypochondrium, if I were to guess, it’d be hepatitis,” he explains, giving Ino the chart, “She’s—”

“Dr. Uchiha!”

He turns around. Dr. Yashiro his gloving herself up, as is Dr. Wakefield. He instinctively reaches out for any gloves’ box near. “What’s up?”

“Ambulance’s on its way, car accident, only one with major injuries,” Dr. Wakefield, _James_ , Sasuke remembers, says.

“ETA?” He asks, rounding the nurse’s station and rushing towards the entry of emergency.

“Any moment now, it happened near,” James says.

James’ words are out at the exact moment they’re through the bay doors and the ambulance arrives, its tires screeching. Its doors open and it reveals a body with its neck wrapped tightly in a collar, its forehead covered with a band attached to a head immobilizer. The rescuer pushes a table in Sasuke’s hands.

“Twenty-four year old, involved in car accident. Multiple neck lacerations, EBL 600cc, major impact in head, he’s out as in the last five minutes.”

“What’s his name?” Sasuke looks down at the table and his eyes fall on the boy. Immediately, he widens them. “Konohamaru—”

“Konohamaru Sarutobi,” the rescuer says, his tone grave.

Sasuke finds himself at a loss for an excruciating second. “C’mon. He’s one of us,” he commands, frowning. He gazes to his right, towards Dr. Yoshiro, “Page Sakura. Tell her we know where Konohamaru is.”

“Only one arriving?” Sasuke reverts his attention towards the rescuer, “Was he the only one?”

“Yes, only him.”

The only thought that slides in his mind before he focuses completely on Konohamaru, as they drag the gurney towards trauma center, is: _Naruto, where are you?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Go, spin me around under the folding branches  
> Now, is not too late, heaven can wait another year or so
> 
> — "Under the Folding Branches" by The Veils
> 
> Medical emergencies are based on cases seen on CBS' tv show Code Black, as well as research and personal knowledge as a medical resident.


	2. Me vieron cruzar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Naruto,” Sasuke cuts him off. He refrains from doing any abrupt movement while still holding the instruments. “You’re going to ruin the stitches.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo! Big thanks to everyone who leave a kudo and/or a comment, all of it encourages me to skip one of my naps (there are a few) and type away. 
> 
> Remember, this is an unbeated work and all the mistakes as well as some awkward writing, since english ain't my mother language, remain my fault.

“Hinata, O2, minor lac tray, get a yankauer too,” Sasuke orders, “He got facial and neck bleeding, we need to stop it. Get n.s, two liters immediately.”

“Saline on its way!”

“What do we do, Dr. Yashiro?” Sasuke pins his gaze on her.

She replies firmly: “His neck is immobilized, there might be injury in spine.”

“Ok, lift him to his right, easy,” he instructs, “Careful with the head. Hold it as though is independent. What do you see, Dr. Wakefield?”

“No signs of bleeding, no bumps or swelling.”

“Spine good for now,” Sakuke declares, “I want to see his front. Ultrasound.”

Dr. Yashiro cuts apart his shirt in a swift move, squeezing gel over Konohamaru. She guides the wand trough the slippery surface. “Negative for fluids.”

Sasuke breathes. “Get forceps, a Kelly, 3-0 prolene, we’re closing off his injuries.”

He positions himself with his face inches away from Konohamaru’s head, a nurse— he doesn’t look up, but he recognizes TenTen’s hands, when she settles his glasses on his nose. “Thanks. Now, Dr. Wakefield, walk me through it. What am I seeing?”

The man lowers besides him. “Suction, please,” he says, and frowns. “External carotid— it seems the lingual artery—”

“No, no, that’s too low,” Dr. Yashiro interrupts, “It’s the facial artery.”

“Correct, Dr. Yashiro,” Sasuke says, and she beams at them. “It barely missed the hypoglossal.”

James doesn’t let himself be beat down. “He got another one. Superficial temporal.”

“We’ll take care of that one first. Dr. Yashiro, hold gauze over the facial,” he instructs. The stitching kit lays over a tray to his right. “We got you, Konohamaru.”

———

Sakura touches his shoulder, a gentle contact that makes warmth seep through his scrubs. “Sasuke, I just saw him.”

“He’s fine,” Sasuke says, “His stats came back, he’s looking for full recovery. Surprisingly, it wasn’t anything major.”

The tension raised in Sakura’s eyes eases when she lets out a long breath, her own shoulders sagging. She lowers her hand. “Thank you.”

“No problemo,” he tells her, shrugging a little, “He came sporting a wound, we fixed him.”

“So you did,” Sakura smiles sunnily, but sobers up rather quickly, “Naruto doesn’t respond his phone.”

Sasuke bares his face of any expression. “Maybe he’s asleep. You know how he is.”

“ _You_ know how he is,” Sakura presses, “We asked the others hospitals to know if he was brought anywhere else, but he didn’t. Konahamaru’s car didn’t show signs of another injured more than him, either.”

He closes his eyes for a second. “If he’s injured, he’ll come to the ER. That much I’m certain of.”

Sakura sends him a dubious look. Her subtle way of coaxing him into worrying for Naruto is unsuccessful, mostly because she’s redundant without knowing it. He’s _already_ worried, a stir of uneasiness piercing his insides and wandering into his thoughts, and it’s the strange imprint that this leaves behind— such a senseless concern that makes him feel the need to withhold any outward glimpse. If there is anything in the likes of being troublesome, it was them causing a storm in a teacup. “Ino told me to give you this, the tests you asked for,” Sakura informs, “She’s on her break.”

Sasuke holds the chart he’s been given while looking at Sakura with an expectant arch of his brow. She contemplates him a long moment, before sniffing and finishing with a resolutive tone, “See the tests, do your thing, try to contact him,” and walks away in time to avoid Sasuke’s glare.

With a huff, he opens the file and looks through the newly added sheets, wondering what changed without his consent, that he now receives orders from none other than a _surgeon_. He then bows not to say that out loud, Sakura was capable of surgically remove his arm during his sleep. He grabs the chart and returns to were Mrs. Velarde is staying, removing the curtain.

“Hello, Mrs. Velarde,” he greets, “How are you feeling?”

“Without dizziness,” Mrs. Velarde smiles, though tiredly, “But it still hurts a little.”

He gives a nod in understatement. “We’ll make you feel better,” he assures, “But I need to ask you a few questions. First one is, is there anyone else that’s feeling like you in your house?”

“Uh, I don’t think so,” the woman replies, “I only live with my two sons and my husband.”

“Are they vaccinated, Mrs. Velarde? Your children, I mean.”

“Yes, yes. They have immunizations’ books and everything.”

“And you? Do you have a registry for which vaccines you’ve took?” Sasuke questions.

She looks confused. “I— yes, a few papers, but is it important?”

“See, in the tests we’ve done, there are a few values that resulted out of their normalcy, and we’re trying to coordinate your symptoms to them,” he states, “So the question about whether you’re vaccinated or not are for the sake of ruling out a few diseases.”

“Oh. I understand,” she says, “Though I don’t remember a few of them.”

“Do you remember having one for Hepatitis?”

“Uh, no? It doesn’t come to me.”

“It’s something easily prevented with a vaccine, but I’ll run a test on that,” Sasuke explains, “Here we have less and lesser cases, but it happens. Once I have the results, I’ll get to you, alright?”

He means it as a farewell, but Mrs. Velarde mutters, “Dr. Uchiha?” so he turns himself back in.

“Yes?”

The woman hesitates, though it’s not long before she keeps on, “Is the man— I mean, was it a man? The accident that was brought here. Sirens could be heard all the way.”

He picks it on the spot. “It was a boy,” he says, albeit he phrases it incorrectly. These days, Konohamaru was hardly a boy anymore, rather a young intern taking up Sakura’s soft spot. He was her little practitioner, and she cherished him as so. It’s probably why she was so against the treatment Sasuke preferred for his own residents. “It’s a boy. One of the staff here.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. Velarde gasps, “Poor child. Is he alright?”

“We stabilized him, and right now all he needs to do is rest,” he guarantees. The woman’s eyes have a telltale convinced reflection in them, so Sasuke gives her a small smile. After all those years, it still stands as a poignant point in his career the fact that a word that comes from him can ensure someone else the feeling of safety people that take the patient’s position often lack. It resembles a faculty brought to a fine science, one that could be thoroughly screwed had the doctor use it wrongly, and some of them couldn’t afford that. “He’ll be able to walk out of it with just a nasty scar.”

She smiles. “Did you do well, Dr. Uchiha?”

“I– What?” Sasuke frowns.

“If you did well to that boy. Were you the one to save him?”

“We all did, ma’am,” Sasuke responds honestly, “My team and I did.”

“That much I’m sure of,” Mrs. Velarde allows, “But I heard you giving orders, and guiding your people. So I ask, have you done well? Do you think you did any good?”

It takes Sasuke a beat longer to give an answer. He chooses what sounds truer to him, pride or presumption aside. “I think I did.”

“You looked a bit troubled when you came here,” Mrs. Velarde tells him, “So I thought, well, maybe he thinks he could’ve done better. But if you saved him, there is no more good that needs to be done, for a while.”

And she keeps on, saying: “You did well, Dr. Uchiha.”

 ———

Medicine saw Sasuke endure through nights filled with uncertainty. Questioning, inquisitions, the mistrust that appears when the world is just white noise. Medicine, that in the beginning was his foremost interest, didn’t introduce on his system with all that much easiness. For months, when the dark hour came, it plainly seemed that it wasn’t the rightful path. That feeling of doubt chased him, biting his heels, even when graduation transformed into a vision painfully close. In the depth on his reasoning, that sometimes bellowed so broad it felt as though it threatened to paralyze him on the spot, this incertitude— he wavered between notions whether it was true vocation who rendered possible his grades.

It was a countdown. He ran faster than most, studied than most, ignored the screech of doubt perhaps more times than he cared to take into account. Sasuke didn’t stop. It these moments where his focus was set in the task of exacerbating scores and marks all around, of becoming good, and better, and best, working each morning and intensifying each night, it was easy to fall exhausted beyond his tolerance and easier to be drove by a goalless pursuit that nevertheless kept the doubt at bay, such as feeding a beast with calming spoons that did not quite quench its hunger. Sometimes it was useless, of course: this was the doubt with its towering, vague future slicing the nothingness with a beam of light in front of him, and when he felt he was about to touch it, it became pitch black again.

It was a thing he needed to do. Both his parents, his brother, his cousin, and a lot of relatives, they were all physicians practicing in an assortment of fields. He craved their status, and held the weight of this lineage like a duty to possess and carry on. Maybe it was a resignation sign the fact that his birth certificate had Uchiha in the indelible, impassable black print, something that denoted a living awfully preconceived. As a child he was too naïve to care, as a teenager he lived in a contempt state in which he made only halfhearted attempts to rise against it, like any boy of his age not really minding would, and as a young man, well, it was still early, he could still give it a try, he _liked_ this…

In the end he chose to stay and bear whatever was needed to bear with a bloody but unbowed head. He could have chosen to fight, could have said he’d be exceeding Itachi nevertheless the field he preferred to be in. What a silly way of thinking, back then. You couldn’t beat the endurance and discipline vocation could give you with a handful of outstanding marks and unwilling allnighters.

Medicine humiliated him in the last years. It hurt him in the process to achieve it. When the practicing years strolled in, the crude reality of experiencing first hand that job made him swallow in new perspectives to his dwarf understanding. In here, doubting meant a more than just himself: no less than someone needing a Sasuke that could readily put them at top priority. This was, thereby, where the real issue laid— this stage didn’t allow indecision, indifference or a lack of resolve anymore.

He chose emergency medicine in a blur. What made him, he doesn’t exactly recall, or rather he does, but it comes along the lines of thriving under the punishing pressure of concentrating on someone that was not him, his doubts or the improbability of a loose future. Dubiety gave way to discipline, the one that pushed him through most, until he came to understand this was his to possess, finally.

What he does remember it’s that it caused a real uproar. Fugaku and Mikoto were neurosurgeons themselves, and Itachi a booming surgeon, too, and him? Well, he couldn’t bother with a lab coat all day because blood dirtied it in the first hours, that he learned it right away. He couldn’t bother with the way some doctors liked to regard themselves, that he learned it after a while. He couldn’t bother with protocol when rules failed to save a patient, that he learned years into his training. But this, this was what he needed, and he learns it and relearns it every single moment: the complex principle of stabilizing a life inside a body in their crucial and sometimes only lasting few minutes, all the while learning to stop forcing doors or jumping through windows, it was— it is having a key. It is flickering the light on.

It is knowing he did well.

Mrs. Velarde’s words open a vault he barely takes a look into once in a while, and where he stores his patients’ gratitude, emotional speeches, words high on praise and wonder. It’s his fault that these things haul with them the old, tatty questions that make him ponder if he, a certified medicician like any other, is giving what is truly necessary (what was truly in merit of praising) when he used to stand in unpredictable, shaky foundations. Sure he manages just alright the part of living his title to its full extent, all the while _at least_ mostly meeting Fugaku’s requirements of an excelled physician meantime having to ignore the grudge he has at his younger son for not questing a branch that fell within the familiar subjects an Uchiha was wonted to. After all, his father is not one to accept novelty easily.

The woman’s words were sincere, honest as the good, heartfelt things are, but they do leave the door ajar in the intimacy of his mind. The greater the eulogy, the harder the beating falls upon him, and there are not punches nor there are kicks, but a quiet quizzical murmuring asking if he’s one to comply with the carrying of her saying. This is how he has become used to deal with his demons; once they all realized their former status was proven fruitless after trying to fuck up everything (with Sasuke  granting himself his diploma even with crippling unsureness of it), they just seemed to grab their luggage and relocate somewhere else.

———

An eyesore bright blue sweater among the people in the waiting hall rings a bell that makes him squint his eyes. The person using it is giving Sasuke their back, the hood over their heads, but something is so off that on his third passing in the waiting room he crosses enough distance until he comes to realize that he’s right, it’s not a stranger’s lamely chosen sweater.

“What the fuck?” He instantly groans, his incredulity giving way to his usual bluntness, “Why are you here?”

The person looks up. It is Naruto’s lamely chosen sweater, with Naruto in it. He seems hesitant for some reason, but steels himself with a grumpy downturn of his mouth. It’s most likely a pout. “I’m waiting for service.”

“I can’t believe this,” Sasuke mutters to himself. _Moody good for nothing, idiotic bastard_ — “Come with me.”

“I kinda want to wait for another doctor,” Naruto says, and the man sitting beside him gives the blond a cautious stare. “Oh, no, he’s a good one. Maybe a little rough on the side—”

“Naruto.”

“Alright, I’m going,” he sighs, standing and trailing after Sasuke.

They dodge people coming and going their way in complete silence. Sasuke knows where to go, and Naruto knows too, because he enters the consultation room number five without a backwards glance before Sasuke does. He takes a slow breath and promises to himself to give Sakura the opportunity to chew and spit Naruto before he kills him. He scratches the back of his neck whilst surveying the room, and Naruto sits on the examination table, resting his back against the wall the table is positioned close to, turning his head to look anywhere else but Sasuke’s direction. He’s acting as thought he was busted and his friend is about to give him the earful of his life for it, which makes Sasuke deflate of that early intention.

He crouches to search inside the lower drawers of a storage cabinet, setting the supplies he draws over the surface, and moving them to a wheeled tray once he’s got all he needs. He pushes the tray closer to the table and drags a chair that makes a scrapping noise all the way he moves it. Sasuke takes a seat, supplements on his side, and awaits for Naruto without uttering a single word.

Naruto slowly turns his head, viewing the tray and its content. He offers his left hand, the one he was cupping tenderly with the other, wrapped in bloodied gauze but folded in a careful display of technique around the palm and the fingers, held in place. Sasuke tugs gently an end and slowly uncovers the injury, a harsh slice across the palm, big but superficial—looking.

He sets to work. Cleans the wound, evaluates for any form of further injuries, antisepticises it, gives Naruto a TT, and injects the surrounding skin with local anesthesia. All with a lack of Naruto’s usual bitching, only a mere grunt here and there that doesn’t even meet the minimum Sasuke is acquainted with at this point. Looking at his friend and finding him eerily silent, he decides to speak first. “Was this caused by the accident Konohamaru was involved in?”

Naruto shakes his head, biting his lips. Sasuke deliberately concentrates again in the hand between his own ones. “Do you have any other injure other than this one?” he asks. The blond shakes his head again.

“Are you lying to me?” he then questions, his voice a notch lower. He can’t begin to understand why these moments he shares with Naruto quieten his tone in one or other way, like unconsciously believing that whatever comes out of his mouth it’s for Naruto’s ears alone. Most times, his instincts are proven right.

“No,” Naruto voices his reply this time, “I sliced my hand peeling a potato.”

“I’d say you’re not this stupid,” Sasuke says, “But you do like to prove me wrong.”

“I was distracted,” Naruto sounds scornful. Towards himself or Sasuke, he couldn’t exactly discern. “Sakura left me a voicemail, and I was hearing it while I was cooking, and…” he trails off.

Sasuke watches the needle, passing it inwards the loop before tensing and blocking the thread. Naruto will need at least seven stitches. He’s on the fourth one when his friend gathers himself to continue, “She was telling me about the accident when I cut open my palm. She said Konohamaru was brought to you, and you took care of him. I was— she leaved a ton of missing calls, before I heard the voicemail. I just didn’t have my phone. And before that, Konohamaru called too. You think maybe—”

“I don’t know, Naruto,” Sasuke murmurs, sensing where this is coming from, “I don’t know how the car crash happened.”

“What if he was calling me? I told him we could have breakfast at my place, since it was closer to the hospital. He wouldn’t be late for his shift then. He said, ‘you know how Dr. Haruno gets’ and I just kept saying, just come to mine, dumbass, you’ll be on time‒ what if, what if he was making the call when he crashed, to tell me he was on his way, and that’s why he was brought here, because he was _closer to this hospital—_ ”

“Naruto,” Sasuke cuts him off. He refrains from doing any abrupt movement while still holding the instruments. “You’re going to ruin the stitches.”

Sasuke’s deadpan puts a stop to Naruto. He finishes quickly afterwards, pulling the thread until its knot is tightened over the skin, and repeating the process in the opposite way to fixate the knot. It’s over and bandaged in the following minutes, but his hands falter at letting Naruto’s go. “Was this why you didn’t go to the ER right away? Because you thought it was your fault?” he asks, his voice caving to softness.

Naruto remains quiet. It reminds Sasuke that he, too, was worried from the very moment he realized the gurney was carrying an unconscious Konohamaru that shortly before Sasuke was sure was having breakfast with Naruto. An absent Naruto that did not answer Sakura’s calls. _But you didn’t stay away for long,_ Sasuke thinks, but does not say out loud, _you needed to be the closest you could. That’s the real reason you were in the waiting room._

Guilt always knows its way in, and it pins you in place. “He’s okay,” Sasuke tells him, skipping his cut to grip his wrist. He can only tell him facts he knows, because those comfort him too. The truth, or anything that reaches closest to it, does. “After this, you’ll be able to see him. He must be awake by now.”

His words seem to sink in gradually. Naruto avoids Sasuke’s eyes, focused instead on where his wrist stays embrace by Sasuke’s hold. “You know,” he murmurs, “Sakura’s sutures are way better than yours.”

“How conveniently,” Sasuke scoffs, “She’ll close you up after she rips you a new one.”

———

“And now I have a really cool scar. You wanna see?”

“Uhh, it looks scary— were you afraid?”

“Nah, I blacked out. It was actually kinda stupid now that I think about it—”

Sasuke yanks the curtain to reveal Konohamaru, who squeaks in surprise, as well as a little girl that jumps in response. “You again in here,” Sasuke snaps.

“Sasuke!” at his hardened stare, Konohamaru harrumphs and corrects, “Dr. Uchiha.”

“You were released from Trauma _yesterday_ ,” he says, crossing his arms. “Supposedly to floor so you could rest properly. Care to explain why is it that you are not resting?”

“Well, you see, I got bored after Grandpa left,” Konohamaru starts sheepishly, “And they don’t let me do anything up there. So I came here and this little champ wanted to see her sister, but she didn’t know where she was.”

Sasuke heaves a sigh. He stoop downs a little to reach the child’s height, since she’s sitting in the empty bed. “Hi. I remember you, I’m the doctor who saw your sister. What’s your name?”

The girl gives him a look mixed between curiosity and apprehension. “Julee,” she replies shyly.

“Well, Julee, I’m quite certain your daddy is looking out for you. He must be very worried,” he says, placing a hand on top of the girl’s head. “If you’re with him, you’ll see your sister shortly. What about I tell a friend of mine to help you find your dad? How does that sound?”

Julee looks to her lap briefly, seemingly thinking it over. She says, “Okay,” and pushes herself to her feet, Konohamaru waving his goodbye when she takes Sasuke’s hand and glances over her shoulder. He leads her towards the nurse’s station, leaving her to Ino, who carries on a chat with her once Sasuke makes sure the blonde knows what’s he’s referring to when he says ‘this girl is from the TBI patient’.

He returns to Konohamaru afterwards, and the young intern says, “You’re good with kids.”

“I’m not,” Sasuke refutes, explaining, “I’m good with patients’ families who don’t have a clue about what’s going on.”

Konohamaru’s face sombers. “That little girl…”

“Her sister came badly injured, ICP to the sky, TBI sighting from a mile away. She needed a MRI right away, so we did what we could at stabilizing her, but our best shot was suit her for surgery. Luckily, Kakashi was free, so I didn’t have to do a DC here in the open.”

“Hatake-san did a DC?!” Konohamaru cries out.

“Dunno. If there’s a meeting arranged in the following days, we’d know he did,” Sasuke says. He reopens the chart he has been carrying since he spotted Konohamaru. “Konohamaru, one more thing.”

He hums questioningly. Sasuke expresses, with a tone strict but not an unkindly one, “I didn’t tell that so you can say it to Julee. Even though she’s entitled to know what’s happening, regardless of her age. Everyone does,” he looks at the forms inside the file for a moment, not really seeing anything. “But it’s not our decision this time, it’s her father’s. If she’s unaware her sister is undergoing surgery, you can’t tell her.”

“But she deserves to know. That’s why she was here in the first place, because she _doesn’t know,_ ” Konohamaru persists.

“We do all we can, and a lot of what we do falls behind, where lines are draw not exactly to our liking. For our sake, and theirs,” Sasuke says, “This right here is a line. You waltzing around with a kid in ER? Also a line. Don’t risk your place in this program.”

“Her father will tell her, right? Whether her sister fully recoveries or… Doesn’t. Will he explain her what happened?”

“Would be great if I had an answer to that,” Sasuke mutters, “Now get back to your room. Study if you’re bored, I won’t be as easy as Sakura is.”

“She really, really isn’t.”

“Then don’t let her know you were loitering instead of recovering, like the useless trainee you are. Go, go!”

“Geez, you don’t have to be so cruel, Dr. Uchiha,” Konohamaru lifts both his hands in a surrendering gesture, walking backwards, but his features are no longer the grim set they’ve been.

“I’m paging Sakura.”

“ _I’m leaving!_ ”

“Damn brat,” Sasuke spits, and promptly startles when a voice to his right claims: “You sounded like Tsunade right there.”

He spins and comes face to face to a Naruto sheathed in black scrubs, his blue Rappaport lying around his neck, and his left hand carefully bandaged up to his wrist. He looks as ready to work as Sasuke is ready to beat some sense into him. “It was just yesterday,” he says, his scowl ominous in between his brows, “But just so you know, I will never let you hear the end of it if I have to redo your stitches. What on earth are you doing here?”

“Hello to you, too,” Naruto cheerfully says, “Since Neji’s sick and Karin’s on her maternity leave, you’re short staffed and I’m here to lend a hand. Literally just one.”

“I have my residents, and we’re barely busy today.”

“But you don’t have any other attending, so suck it up,” Naruto grins, “And your ‘barely busy’ means code yellow. I’ll have one of your kids.”

“Grab the two of them and leave,” Sasuke says drily.

“Can I get Dr. Wakefield? He’s cute.”

Sasuke clenches his jaw, and releases a slow breath through his nose. “Stop playing, Naruto. You’re unfit for ER if you rely in only one hand.”

“I’ll guide him through, and he’ll be my left. And you don’t really have any say in this,” the blond’s tone has a teasing end that annoys him further. He gives Sasuke a little salute sign and heads for the direction where the residents are just gloving themselves up, making Sasuke have no choice than to reluctantly abide by his friend’s, if asked to him, shitty decisions, after he’s finished filling the forms in his chart. For their parts, across the nurse’s station, Dr. Yashiro and Dr. Wakefield greet Naruto with welcoming smiles.

“James, Sui, it’s been years,” Naruto says, and he tilts his face in a mocking sad motion.

“We saw you a few days ago, Dr. Uzumaki,” Sui states.

“You were the one to diagnose Sui’s patient, after we stabilized him,” James reminds him.

“You don’t even let me mess with you anymore,” Naruto grunts, “I think—”

“Dr. Uchiha!” Ino calls, “Two incoming, ETA two minutes. Car crash.”

“Get ready!” Sasuke says gruffly, gloving up, and striding towards the bay doors. The three follow him up, “Dr. Yashiro, you’re with Dr. Uzumaki today. Dr. Wakefield, you with me,” Naruto opens his mouth, surely to disobey Sasuke’s orders, but he cuts him off by saying, “Dr. Yashiro, Dr. Uzumaki’s having a hard time with his injured hand, be sure to inform me if there’s any problem.”

“That’s low, Sasuke,” Naruto glowers at him.

“You don’t really have any say in this,” Sasuke mocks him, and watches Naruto roll his eyes, to his delight. “Think you can keep up, blondie?”

“You haven’t call me that since first year,” Naruto groans.

Sasuke smiles. “Good days, those. Both your hands tended to work. Eh, so-so.”

Naruto sends him a sharp look. The sirens sound closer and the blond relents from replying when the ambulance trucks arrive with a noisy stop. “You’ll eat your words. Dibs on the right one!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Le dije a mi coraje antes que te dé calambre  
> Cocíname las ganas que mis sueños tienen hambre 
> 
> — "Me Vieron Cruzar" by Calle 13 
> 
> Next chapter: Naruto does need new stitches. 
> 
> DC stands for Decompressive Craniectomy, a procedure perfomed on patients with raised ICP (intercranial pressure), whose use brings up polemics. Medical emergencies are based on cases seen on CBS' tv show Code Black, research (shootout to Harrison, the real MVP), and personal knowledge as a medical resident.


	3. A vial of hope (part I)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Apology cookies,” he says, pushing the tupperware towards Naruto. It’s a lie so bad maybe he won’t see it as such.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and your kudos & comments! They're the reason I sit my ass down to write at a speed faster than a turtle. A shift in the POV on this one! /jazz hands
> 
> Friendly reminder that this is unbetaed.

“Dr. Yashiro, what do you see?”

“Posterior, no bones fractured,” she replies, looking at the computer screen with the X-rays displaying.

Naruto nods, settling a hand in the man’s chest in a soothing gesture. The man, who looks well into his forties, is groaning and grips Naruto’s gloved hand with all the strength his panicking state can give him. His lips tremble, and he looks directly into Naruto’s eyes, with a panicked gleam. “Sir, you have a dislocated hip. The head of your femur popped out of place, so we need to relocate it before it compromises any nerves.”

The man breathes shallowly, scared. “Is it gonna hurt? Oh God, I-I can’t even f-feel my feet—”

“We’ll give you something for the pain. Nerve’s already being damaged. Dr. Yashiro, pulse?”

“Present in right, but it’s weak in the left one. Foot’s getting colder.”

“Alright, let’s not waste time. TenTen, twenty milligrams of morphine, shoot it,” Naruto instructs, “Hold the hip in place, Dr. Yashiro. I’m going to lift his leg and on my count, one, two, three—” the blond pushes the leg until the bones gives, a distinct creak that it’s drowned by the man’s loud scream and his following sobs. Naruto looks at Sui, “Test the feet.”

Sui evaluates the feet as Naruto says, “Sir, do you feel the movement?”

The man shakes his head, bawling out, “I can’t, I c-can’t!”

“Page Dr. Inuzuka, we need him stat,” Naruto orders, “Let’s get him to OR!”

“Dr. Uzumaki—” Sui starts.

“Stay. Page me if there’s any arriving, Dr. Uchiha’s going to be right back after his CT scan,” Naruto says over his shoulder.

———

Naruto’s pager emits a sound about fifteen minutes later, and in his hurry towards Trauma, he nearly crashes into Sasuke. The brunet has a telltale forbidding set in his face that signals he does not carry any good news, that and the fact that with him two nurses push a gurney over which a woman lies, seemingly unconscious. Naruto realizes it’s the second patient they’ve got when the ambulances arrived earlier, and she was brought in with a failure in response and scoring low in the Glasglow. He was busy with the man and his dislocation, but he clearly recalls Dr. Wakefield and Sasuke discussing the woman’s status and Sasuke’s cry of ‘she needs a CT scan, c’mon!’. He breathes deeply before asking, “What showed in the scan?”

“Epidural hematoma, and her ICP just won’t lower— we’re going to do it right at home,” Sasuke says in a rush, shoving the gurney alongside the nurses.

Naruto frowns. “What do you mean? Call Kakashi right away!”

“What do you think I was doing while I was looking at her CT scan?” Sasuke questions, the grim in his tone deepening, “Kakashi’s got his hands full with a transcalvarial, and I’ll get a hernia on this woman myself if we don’t do something right now.”

“She’s going to get into a respiratory arrest then, if you don’t get her into OR!” Naruto objects.

“If she falls into arrest, then the ER is the right place to be at the time,” Sasuke says, and he pushes the gurney one last time before he stops, looks towards Naruto, and in his eyes there’s such a inscrutable shine it makes the blond worry tenfold. “If we don’t go all the way, what’s the use in trying?”

Naruto swallows. Earlier on, he showed up in the emergency swing in time to hear Sasuke admonish Konohamaru, talking about lines and their discordancy when it came to being caged by the aforementioned. But Naruto knows a lot of these lines are drawn by the person itself; you are meant to be the first one to hold yourself back when it is truly what’s needed, you are meant to know when to stop in order to avoid the swamp and become stuck. “Sasuke—”

They’re in Trauma before Naruto realizes it. Sasuke shouts instead of addressing Naruto, “Dr. Wakefield! Get your suit on, it’s ballroom time.”

Naruto no longer can pay him his undivided attention. But he still voices in a reproachful manner, while he gloves up once again, “Sasuke, you’re risking her here.”

“Another Wednesday in the ER, Naruto,” Sasuke says, his comment dies without a response when Dr. Yashiro gets in, a gurney being rushed by her side, and she exclaims, “Dr. Uzumaki!”

“Ok, Dr. Yashiro, tell me what’s going on,” Naruto tells her, putting on his stethoscope. He examines the man’s chest as Sui is explaining. He looks downwards, listing in his mind the words Sui says: Kidney failure, uremic, and his eyes look at the unconscious man, with an oxygen mask on and labored breathing. “I need an I-stat, if he remains this way his heart will not bear the burden.”

Sui gets the analyzer and looks stricken when she realizes James is there, too, vocalizing her surprise in the spurt of the moment, “What’s going on? Why was she brought here again?”

Naruto replies, “Bad decision-making,” his words muffled by the sudden sound of a drill. He grimaces. “Sui, the result?”

“Is Dr. Uchiha having a drill?—”

“A fault in his character. Dr. Yashiro, the result,” he presses. Sasuke, in a show of utterly inappropriate sense of humor (Naruto swears  _he’ll_  be the one to sue him this time), cuts in: “Dr. Wakefield, tell Dr. Uzumaki and Dr. Yashiro why I am indeed having a drill.”

“The patient’s epidural hematoma is progressing and it’ll lead to an upward herniation due to its position, and a trepanning needs to be done in order to decrease the pressure—”

“ _You’re making a hole in her skull?_ ” Sui asks, astonished.

Naruto loses his patience. “Dr. Yashiro, the result, or else you’re out!”

“I, uh, it’s nine,” Sui manages, fumbling with the machine. Her cheeks tint with a blotchy red. Naruto feels slightly bad for snapping at her, but he senses his temper running awfully short.

“Too high, he’s knocking the arrest’s door,” and then he instructs to the nurse for albuterol, a d50, insulin IV, along with a dialysis, all the while the drill’s screeching noise invades the room. He hears Dr. Wakefield saying, ‘it’s drooping!” and casts an unsure glance at Sasuke.

Sasuke doesn’t raise his head, not until the drill stops whirling and an unequivocal sound of blood leaking and dripping fills Naruto’s ears, like water flooding below the unforgiving sun of a desert. He sighs at the same time Sasuke does, and when their eyes meet, Naruto believes they both agree in a  _‘later’_ with that single brief gaze. Naruto is the first to break the contact, and his mouth twitches when pain shoots across his left palm as he’s stripping off the gloves. He unfolds the bandage and sighs in defeat.

———

The smell of coffee wafts through the air and lingers in his nose, strong and reverberating each time he takes a breath. The cup is hot enough that a steady string of steam rises from the surface. Naruto knows that right now consuming that coffee can only leave a disagreeable scalding that will surely bother the tender muscle in the tongue for hours on end, but Sasuke always forgets he’s got a coffee the first ten minutes, thus by the time he remembers to reach for it, the liquid has a pleasant temperature that does not burn.

He knows that by a principle of empiricism. A lock of Sasuke’s dark hair twists in a funny way around the juncture where the right leg of his glasses meets the body, Sasuke nevertheless is swiftly pulling the thread of the stitch and he pays no mind to it. Naruto feels the need to disentangle the lock, in the same way you look for your phone even though it hasn’t ring, or expands your hand over the empty side of the bed. He ignores the itch just as easily, something telling him Sasuke’s quiet stance is a spell he ought not to break.

It’s like yesterday’s repeating itself, but this time it’s Sasuke the one to choose when to speak. A beat or a hundred passes, Naruto can’t be sure, before his friend says, “Two head injuries, and it isn’t even ten a.m.”

Naruto inquires, “The woman and the one Kakashi was handling?”

“Yeah. It arrived before you did, and developed a hernia while Kakashi was doing a craniectomy.”

“So you bought them time. To your patient and Kakashi,” Naruto sums up, “In a crazy, I’ll channel my inner neurosurgeon-sorta way.”

Sasuke hums noncommittally. He doesn’t say anything else for the stretch of time it takes him to finish another stich whilst Naruto is holding an inner monologue as he looks at the way the needle pierces his skin again in less than a day, his hand dumb, with the cut still fresh and pink. He pried the permission from Tsunade,  _casually_  begged until she relented and told him he could do his shift in the ER, but established in no uncertain terms he still was needed on floor to keep tabs (he already knew that) and the second his hand worsened in any way he was out for at least a week, partially recovery and mostly punishment. He couldn’t retort about the unfairness of that arrangement because Tsunade shipped him out with her last say being ‘and you’re off to a bad start if enrollment finds you lacking a hand, child’.

He’s expected to be an attending in the IM rotations, but it wasn’t what the old hag was referring to. The silence and his thoughts come to a stop at the sudden noise Sasuke makes when ripping apart a gauze pad. He still won’t look at Naruto, which is fine by him. He can carry a pretty decent conversation with the man passing from him. Empiricism, remember?

“So, spring’s enrollment,” Naruto begins, “We’re getting ‘em early.”

Sasuke arches an eyebrow. “I know. My father sends me an email every time their program opens admissions,” he says plainly, “Even though it’s been two years.”

“He still wants you to have your way with a knife,” Naruto croons, “I think that if you tell him about the burr hole, he’ll get his hopes up.”

Sasuke snorts. He frowns a little, too, something he can’t keep from doing for at least five minutes, but especially when the topic concerns his father. “Well, those emails will sit unread until he tires out.”

“If he’s an Uchiha like you, so bullheaded, you might not want to hold your breath,” Naruto says, trying for a lighter tone. Sasuke finishes wrapping the stitches, snaps the latex gloves off, and lowers his glasses. Then he reaches for the coffee and takes a long sip. Naruto won’t probably have a quieter, more peaceful moment to say any of this, so he works with what he gets. “I, uh. Dad sent me an email about enrollment this time, too.”

Sasuke sets the coffee aside. “At his hospital? I thought the internships were on hold.”

“Yeah, they are,” Naruto confirms, “But the postgraduates programs are going to open. Since he’s the new director, he won’t work as an attending this time around.”

“For the Cardiology program, you mean,” Sasuke says. Naruto eyes the cup; it doesn’t look all that hot anymore, so he extends his arm in a move to grab it, but the brunet holds his wrist midair. “No sharesies.”

“You’re a  _child_ ,” Naruto grouses.

“Same thing. Children don’t share.”

“When you get that far in a point, it makes me mad,” he tries to withdraw his arm and Sasuke lets his wrist go. Naruto swallows before adding, “But yes. The Cardiology program. He won’t be actively there, and it’s been two years, like you said. So I thought…”

Sasuke picks it from where he trails off. “You want to take residency there.”

“Yeah,” Naruto says, briefly looking downwards before rising his gaze, “I’m already an internist, so I can take it if I want.”

Sasuke’s silence is longer than necessary. He’s his  _friend_ , Naruto can tell when he goes oddly reserved, he has learnt all about Sasuke’s usual stillness and the abnormality that some occasions arise. The biting chill of disappointment pools in his gut, when Sasuke assesses him but does not speak another word. For the sake of this conversation, and knowing anything he says can have them going downhill or reaching a status quo in which they ignore the very existence of this exchange, he doesn’t push another response from his friend, but he doesn’t back off, either. He can’t imagine Sasuke jumping up and down in joy, nor becoming so upset he doesn’t hear him anymore, but this, this silence— he feels the sign of a bad omen that passes through him, a wind riveting in his insides, because this time he can’t find the frequency at which Sasuke’s silence truly speaks.

“Their cardiology unit is just otherworldly. I’ve been thinking of trying to enter, even though dad’s there. They’ll know right away he’s my dad, I guess,” Naruto says, scratching the back of his head, “He’s always telling his comrades about me, and you might think that’s a good thing but it’s damn embarrassing,” he inspects the dressing of his wound, tracing the lines of the bandage rolled around the cut, and mostly occupying himself so he dampens the need to squirm. “It also means everyone will think I’ve got there using him as a shortcut, but I’m going to get a position in the program by my own merits.”

He looks at Sasuke, directly to his eyes, and knows the moment a fight is taking place in the reverse of his mind. It’s in his dark gaze, flicking with a display within them, but Naruto can’t begin to fathom what’s he’s battling against, what’s grazing victory and what’s losing ground. Or maybe he knows, but it’s been more than ten years and Sasuke cannot choose this kind of moment to—

Of course he doesn’t. Something gives in and the brunet grunts, “How long before you go?”

Naruto clenches his good hand. “It’ll be two weeks before they hire a replacement here, and it seems they’re not letting me go unless my vacancy is taken, but that’s okay,” he mutters the last part, and repeats, “That’s… Okay.”

“Good,” Sasuke says. He takes his cup, still half full, and walks towards the door. “You can finish your job before you leave.”

And with that he departs; his words, like the smell of coffee, lingering in his wake.

——— 

Sasuke goes home only after they hit code green, two hours before midnight, though knowing early morning always brings havoc. He initially considers driving to a nearby 24h store for something he can heat and eat in no more than three steps, then declines this idea in favor of leftovers stored at the back of his fridge he knows will go stale by the weekend. These plans stay on his mind until he enters his bedroom, kicks off his shoes, and promptly collapses in the mattress.

He wakes up with a headache, starting as a mild phantom pain reverberating in his head, passing as disorientation, later Sasuke thinks ruefully; that’s how the most traitorous headaches start. It’s been the first day on many weeks that he has woke up this way— groaning at the pulsing of the noise his alarm makes in his head, and foolishly willing it to stop without trying to stop it himself. He looks blearily at the numbers in the clock, and at that moment recalls he just fell asleep like that, still wearing the clothes he left the hospital with, and managed almost solid seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. Albeit that being one of the longest time he has spent resting during the last few weeks, upon straightening he feels drained and more exhausted than the way he arrived yesterday.

In a blur, he accredits the pain to his current sleeping pattern and the irregularity thereof, sleeping before it was ten and the next day stumbling awake through a forty eight hour shift. It’s logical that he’d give himself a headache with such disproportion, but telling himself a reason for it doesn’t make it to go away. He needs to be up and kicking in 10 mins if he wants to follow his routine for the day, but he doesn’t look forward for it, not in the slightest, and sheer habit just makes it in time to push him out of his bed and into jogger pants. In his run, images of his dreams thread in between his thoughts, he can’t remember all of them, but there’s one that sits clear in his conscious eye: He was in his brother’s reunion, embarrassed because he forgot to change his filthy, bloodied shoes, and were now dirtying Itachi’s linoleum.

It turns out the morning run also doesn’t help with the pain and, on his way back to his house, he rather feels worse and positive his brain is still bouncing around with the movement of his jogging pace. Before walking to his door, his neighbor (an old lady who cannot stand straight anymore) catches him and despite the fact that he always tells her she needs to visit a doctor instead of waiting for him, he beckons her inside the house to write her a receipt and examine her as best as he can with the ORL and the stethoscope he keeps at home. She’s having the usual symptoms of allergy, and Sasuke can bet the waiting room will be filled with cases like hers due to the beginning of the goddamned spring.

He leaves twenty minutes later, after taking a shower and having something for breakfast (a bowl of fruit  _is_  a meal, he tells himself, even if no one is saying otherwise). On his way outside the old lady approaches him again, this time with a small tupperware, saying she was baking for his grandchildren when they would visit her later that day, but that he could have some from the first batch as a thanking gesture. He accepts the container, tells her to avoid spring cleaning if she doesn’t want to worsen her sneezes, and goes to his car. His day doesn’t start before eight, but the lack of attendings has put him in odd shifts and moreover, he doesn’t really like to leave the hospital for more time than strictly necessary, regardless of the unimpressed stares Tsunade (and sometimes, unsurprisingly and very much in the likes of Tsunade, Sakura too) sends his way when he puts off a 72h and returns only a few hours after, supposedly rested, to start again.

Sasuke avoids some of the traffic jam of the morning, driving without rush and thinking idly about any method of sneaking the tupperware inside sans having to share its content or even showing its existence, knowing full well that its fate in the resting room lies in Sasuke’s ability to hide it from anyone’s knowledge. In the end, he eats half of what he expected and ended being cookies, and marches towards the only place in where he thinks the cookies will survive until his lunch, but of course his plans take their marry way in another route when, upon opening the door that is strangely unlocked and crossing the threshold, Naruto jerks his head up and then stills.

He’s not surprised that this is the kind of thing his luck manages to pull off, then again the probability of finding Naruto in  _his_  office was high, only made illusively unlikely from the fact that he ought to be in ER a little after nine, not here, and certainly not now. Sasuke tightens his grip on the container and remembers Naruto’s supposed to be in floor, too, so he’s not allowed to replace his time there for work down in emergency, not fully at least.

The urge to flee glides the length of his spine and swarms its way inside, biting his nerves, its chance to shine yesterday, when Sasuke bolted the fuck away from the examination room before not even swallowing down his tongue could suppress the words nearing their outlet, when he couldn’t properly talk about Naruto’s forthcoming departure because he wanted to be a cardiologist like his dad, of course he did, he was his father’s pride—

He’s Dr. Namikaze exact copy, just taking his right to be his successor. Sasuke finds that his legs prickle, but his brain doesn’t muster the command to take off.  _Their cardiology unit is just otherworldly,_ Naruto had said, and that Sasuke had known, that their own unit couldn’t stand a chance against Dr. Namikaze’s. They specialize in it, just as Fugaku’s workplace specializes in neurosurgery.   _It’ll be another two weeks before they hire a replacement here,_    Naruto had said. Sasuke remains rooted, a death grip seizing the tupperware.

Naruto’s not wearing scrubs, instead groomed in a pressed white dress shirt with a navy tie pinned in the midsection. He’s also sporting his pristine lab coat, not a single wrinkle in the whole of him. Surely he arrived early so he could take care of his own patients admitted and maintained in observation. I’m going to get a position in the program by my own merits, Naruto had sworn. He’s been stockpiling his merits right after he started medicine, then long into his residency, then when he began exercising his title. Naruto’s the current embodiment of self-sufficient merits and he’s going to become a top notch cardiologist with the sheer proficiency of his virtues, whereas Sasuke, as he looks down during a brief lapse of time, discovers he has put the sneakers with the blood stains on them.

Such is his life, but Naruto might go away sometime in the following weeks, and maybe that’s why his feet move no inch farther from this place. “What are you doing here?” he asks. 

Naruto looks doubtful but sounds honest when he answers, “AC on second floor won’t work, and they think the problem comes from the central system,” he closes a few files and it’s then that Sasuke realizes he’s doing charts. “So maintenance said it'll take them the better part of today to get it running again.”

“You mean, it’s going to be three days before it actually works,” Sasuke says.

“You said it, not me,” Naruto shrugs, “In any case, my office’s a furnace and I think I’ll sweat over my papers.”

“It’s only thirty past seven and we haven’t reach anywhere close to spring’s full weather,” he replies, entering his office. He leaves the container over his desk, and puts his backpack on the floor. “So you might want to try again.”

“I’ve been using a tie since  _five_ , I’m allowed to sweat my ass off,” Naruto says, his eyes falling to the container. “And I wanted to talk to you— what’s that?”

Of course Naruto wants to talk to him. He’s been doing it  _years_ down the road, giving Sasuke a piece of his mind even after he’s walked off more times than he can probably remember. But this time it’s Sasuke fault alone, he’s above placing the blame in his friend when he hasn’t meant a single bad thing. He’s above that now, at least, because Naruto’s decision is greater than Sasuke’s cold shoulder, anger or frustration. He knows he doesn’t exteriorize any of that, but Naruto has a knack for pinpointing them anyway, no matter how small they are. It resides beyond Sasuke’s grasp the understanding of how he does it.

“Apology cookies,” he says, pushing the tupperware towards Naruto. It’s a lie so bad maybe he won’t see it as such.

“You’re shitting me,” Naruto narrows his eyes. He takes the lid off and gapes for full three seconds. “What.”

“Told you,” Sasuke crosses his arms.

“Well, you didn’t buy them, or you wouldn’t have bothered with a tuppeware. And you didn’t  _make_  them, you can’t be trusted with sweets, not even boiled sugar.”

“I’m going to take them back and eat all of them in front of you.”

“No need for extreme measures,” Naruto rolls his eyes, “I’ll have them. I guess they can be payback for the soup incident.”

He holds one and takes a small bite, but not long passes before he drives the entire cookie into his mouth. “They’re good, damn,” he says, chewing, and reaching for another one to nibble. “You totally didn’t make these.”

“They’re from Mrs. Williams,” Sasuke admits, extending his arm to take one, “She gave them to me when I was leaving.”

“I knew they weren’t apology cookies,” Naruto says in between bites.

“But I’m sharing, so they’re what I feel like and you can shut up.”

Naruto looks like he’s mulling something over, he stops chewing and his gaze falls for a moment. Sasuke breathes and it’s as though he’s inhaling smoke, the ashes that fill him oozes inside his system, leaving in their track the ghosting embers, the choking feeling of a burnt fire. Out of an urgency for something to be ocuppied with, he circles his desk and opens the top drawer on the right side, rummaging for a bottle of pills. He thinks it’s a perfect excuse for walking out, in the search of water so the pills can past through his throat, because he knows this: he has no chance of swallowing them with the back of his mouth feeling this thoroughly dry, dusty, like the room has been sealed shut with wisps of smoke within.

He pops out two pills and before moving, Naruto slides a cup closer to him. “Apology coffee.”

Sasuke sniffs disapprovingly, yet not without humor. He lifts the cup, takes a swig, and gulps the pills in one go. He promptly coughs, “This is plain sugar, Jesus.”

Naruto huffs. “It’s coffee. Mine, shared to you, in fact. Coffee, sugar, and—” he reads the label the bottle Sasuke has put back over the desk, “Analgesics. Triple effect.”

“I doubt your license sometimes,” Sasuke says in a drone tone.

“This morning I doubted yours, actually,” Naruto says, his lips’ edges tugging upwards. But his smile dims gradually afterwards, in turn taking a strained line. “I— before you go on shift, I’ll buy you a coffee, as a proper apology.”

“You don’t have to do that, Naruto,” Sasuke sighs. “Maybe I’m the only one thinking I made the right call, and if you don’t believe the same, you can’t help it—”

“I’m not talking about that,” Naruto interrupts him, “It’s about the residency thing.”

“Oh,” Sasuke utters.

“I’m sorry,” Naruto says, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you sooner, or asked for your opinion.”

A rueful grimace covers up the gentle, youthful features in Naruto’s face, but it’s nothing compared to the deep dismay Sasuke is trapped with. This is not a new thing, not a new position, not a new conversation. Naruto has always been like this, taking the upper hand of flooding his mouth with apologies and explanations for a chance to reach an atonement of sorts that, in the end, it’s not his responsibility— he’ll settle the guilt on him and uphold it to a fault, if it meant things can work out from that, if it meant a one-night bridge is built that sets them towards resolution. The first years, Sasuke became accustomed to use that in his favor; it allowed himself to detach further, to avoid blame and ignore regret all the more easier. More times than not, though, Naruto was the only one between the two that agreed on a blame that did not belong to him, because he was stupid and gracious and fucking kind-hearted like that.

Then it made him mad, the more years it passed like that, the more it happened in their relationship. It made him seethe, when he realized it was a fault in Naruto’s character, but it was too in his. Letting it go by like that— it punched a guilt so bright in him, a carbuncle scorching his eyes, he inaccurately, blindingly called it fury. These days he can’t stand Naruto saying sorry for something that has Sasuke’s name and address in the clearest font to achieve, he can’t make Naruto hold any weight that he before has refused stubbornly to bear.

He can’t do much, but he allows himself to put a stop in his friend’s apology. There are many things he wants to say, but only a handful of them are what Naruto deserves, what he needs to hear because he has come to Sasuke asking for his understanding and support, and Sasuke will give him that and whatever he deems necessary, if only Naruto asks for it. The fact that he’s angry because Naruto is leaving them, the fact that he’s terrified because he might end up favoring working there instead of here, all of that isn’t suited for this thing, for this position, for this conversation.

It’s a contradiction almost chasing the edge of an utter antithesis that he chooses to remain silent before speaking his mind, something that the years has found him doing without a second though, but he won’t put anything on the line, he won’t say the fact that stands most: his  _infatuation_ over his friend is privately trying to pin him in this place, and that’s not somethings Naruto needs to hear, or compromise in the behalf of, so he’ll make everything stay in the backseat, smothered. So he’ll numb it with ice, and seal it within his own room, like this room, even if it has wisps of smoke too.

“Even if you told me a year before, I would have been mad anyway. We don’t want you to leave,” He says at length. This tiny shred of truth dislodges his tongue, it slides so easily he wonders if it’s alright to say it, if truths like this can clear the air. “Some internists take their specialization right away if they can. But you waited because you wanted to learn first, and you’ve done enough waiting. Just do it, and come back and give our unit a spin on its tracks.”

A long time goes by before Naruto stage whispers, “You think fate gets it wrong, too? I need to go. You think— is that wrong?”

“How should I know?” Sasuke answers honestly, “I only know that you’re leaving.”

“I’m doing it anyway,” Naruto convincingly says, “It’s not gonna change anything, though. It’s just a twist our thick skulls are not getting across.”

Sasuke's chuckle lacks its easy undertone. “Are you high? I brought my lantern.”  

“Ass,” Naruto snorts, “It’s not gonna change anything, because it hasn’t in more than ten years.”

“You trailed after me for all that time, Naruto,” Sasuke argues, “This one’s different.”

“No, it’s  _not_ , it’s only five or six years of the same thing, only that—” Naruto pauses for a shuddering breath, “Only that I’m not going to see the face you make sometimes, when you— when you— that’s why I get the feeling I  _can’t_ go, even if fate’s dragging me with him—”

Sasuke bites the underside of his right cheek, trying the hold back the sigh that will push him right in the open, to no avail. “I’m sure you’ll do it, Naruto,” he mutters. It’s willessly that what he says next flows and the words find themselves no longer within a dam, freed of the mire, and they don’t seem to want to be stopped. “You’re momentum walking on its own legs, and you’re sharper than any scalpel— hell if I know if it’s fate or the goddamn universe throwing a fit. If I ought to believe on something, I choose to be on you.”

This, this is a revelation on itself. Naruto’s looking at him, his eyes are the bridge Sasuke dreaded to cross, but past his doubt— years in which he were stuck, he comes to realize that past them there’s a place vast and bright; a meadow awaiting for his stride, and he hopes his own sight is not tricking him, he wants to embrace that hope for dear life. He can’t, he can’t quite move any more, he can’t quite say any more, shifting close before he stands still, and Sasuke thinks he reads it clearly off Naruto’s eyes,  _I’ll meet you halfway the voyage_. He’s not certain there will be another chance at picturing that prairie like this one, the one he can’t approach, ablaze with the promise of them, but for now he chooses to believe in that all the same. It’s a once in a lifetime meeting, so they cannot return to this place, but spring and its fields are always somewhere else.

 “Okay,” Naruto says, smiling a little. Sasuke mirrors him, thinking,  _it’s okay. I want to, I’ll wait_. That calms him somehow, so he holds on it tight. The goddamn, goddamn spring, that’s bringing him acid rain in its equinox, but he’ll foolishly expect to be around when spring comes back, however much it takes.

———

Naruto looked like he wanted to add something right away, but Sasuke’s pager going off was the perfect interruption before they stepped further into something that Sasuke believes it to be a one-way path for him, be it hell or anything he doesn’t dare to dedicate a single thought, not right now, not even if Naruto’s  _only that I’m not going to see the face that you make when you_ — created a whirlwind he barely manages to escape from. He hurries to ER and he makes each powerful stride he takes a physical reminder that over his dead body he’ll put Naruto in the position of reconsidering his residency in another hospital, or worse, revaluating his return to this hospital in the discovery of Sasuke’s expendable emotions.

He snaps out of it before he drowns himself in questions about what face Naruto was referring to in what moment, the points that rise more confusion, when he catches the gurney with Dr. Wakefield and Dr. Yashiro on their way to Trauma Center, too, and asks, “What do you got me?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is longer than what I like as my standards per chapter, so I decided to cut it in two halves, since this early part on itself is heavy on setting things in motion.
> 
> Medical emergencies are based on cases seen on CBS' tv show Code Black, combined with research (these scenes take longer to get all the info as accurate as it can be than to actually write, goddamn) and personal knowledge as a medical resident.


	4. A vial of pain (part II)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “C’mon, boy, give me a sign.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently writing a story and studying medicine isn't something a twenty-something year old like moi can do all that easily, but I can't simply give up. The very belated part 2 of chapter three, in all its delayed glory. Hope you're still enjoying it! 
> 
> This work remains un'betaed (cringes).

The man over the gurney yells in pain just about the same time his phone vibrates inside his scrubs’ pocket. He ignores both things and instructs, “Another shot, Hinata,” followed by, “Dr. Yashiro?” 

“Bone relocated, slight swilling, and normal nerve function,” Sui answers, gingerly palping the man’s right shoulder and arm. 

“Right. Get him on a sling, tuck him in bed, do your charts,” Sasuke finishes, getting rid of the used gloves. 

“Oído cocina,” Sui makes a mock salute and marches in the opposite direction of where Sasuke chooses to head to. He prays for another patient to rush through the swing doors and a second later remembers he isn’t supposed to be waiting for that, for fuck’s sake, what is wrong with me— oh, yes, he knows what in fact is wrong with him, but he smothers it with a tight grip, takes the three charts that are his own and seeks refuge, actually looks out for somewhere to use as a hiding place and since he’s man enough to admit it, it’s because he can’t stand Naruto and the looks the blond is throwing his way. 

He goes to the supply room and double checks through the clear picture window that shows the inside of the room. Not a place to hide in, really, but it’s quiet and he’ll be by himself, only that the thought of getting enough solitude for his brain to run as it pleases isn’t as appealing as he initially believes. He thinks he got lucked out for this job, since it just doesn’t allow his mind to float adrift from any matter at hands, gloved, full of fluids hands, or else.

He supports his weight against the further wall from the window’s sight and slowly slides downwards until he hits the floor with a muffled noise. His phone vibrates again, he wonders why he hasn’t turn off the goddamn thing, but he checks it nevertheless. Three missed calls from Karin, and a bunch of texts that he’ll be bothered with in fucking never. He sighs, unblocking his phone, touching the contact section and dealing Karin’s number. She goes lengths if he ever tries to ignore her longer that her patience can run, and Sasuke doesn’t exactly want a grouchy, pregnant woman showing up impromptu in his house. 

She picks up after the third tone. “ _A burr hole in ER, Sasuke, really._ ” 

“Oh, yeah. I’m good, too,” he grunts, “Are you casually spying on me? Again.” 

“ _Nope, I’m on my back, huge and unable to move like an upside-down turtle,_ ” she says brightly. 

“You have a way with words,” he says. On the other side, Karin chuckles. “How did you know?” 

“ _You can’t do anything without me finding out,_ ” Karin says, matter-of-fact, “ _If they let it pass, then we’ll know who favors who and I’m gonna be upset._ ”

“No one favors me, Karin,” Sasuke rolls his eyes, even if his friend can’t see him, “I had to do it, or else that woman—”

“ _Yes, yes, your duty complex drives you the extra mile,_ ” she cuts him off, then adds, “ _But hey, if I do something as crazypants as that, we can share the courtroom._ ” 

“That’s not as comforting as you think it is,” he replies, his mouth turning upwards despite himself, “How’s the baby treating you?” 

“ _I think he hates my guts already, that’s a thing for Guinness right there,_ ” Karin sighs. 

“Yeah, I’d hate you too,” Sasuke jokes. His shoulders fall, sagging, and he lets his body curve into itself a little. Karin’s voice washes over him, she bitches about the pregnancy, the mood swings, her uncanny ability to squat enough time to pee in bathrooms with questionable cleaning regimens, the fact that she can’t look twice at food she used to stuff her mouth with to her heart’s content. He laughs and lets a chuckle or two or ten slip out of his mouth, lets himself soak in Karin’s ranting like it hasn’t been two weeks since she took maternity leave, finally, because if there’s someone almost as stubborn as he is about leaving this job, it’s her. The anchoring effect Karin brings on him with her constant bickering and off-hand reassuring it’s an item he’s feeling the lack of, too, though he’ll take to his grave the fact that he misses her making him high-five, or when she makes faces at every strange patient, too honest to hold it back. 

“ _Jesus on a crutch, I gotta pee,_ ” she says, groaning. On her side, there’s the sound of a bed creaking, sheets rustling, and Karin bemoans, “ _I’m forbidding Suigetsu from putting it in me for a thousand years after this._ ” 

“I thought you’d be the one of us with at least five kiddies.” 

“ _Making ‘em? A fun ride, sure, but having ‘em just won’t do,_ ” she replies. Sasuke hears a switch being used one, twice, three times. “ _Great, the lightbulb’s not working._ ” 

“You can’t pee in the dark?” 

“ _What are you? A Neanderthal? I’ll get a spare lightbulb and a ladder._ ” 

Sasuke snorts. “Use your phone’s flash. You should wait for Suigetsu.” 

“ _Suigetsu’s not home ‘till a few hours more, and I’m not invalid, you know, just with some extra weight._ ” 

“You just wanna be difficult, Karin.” 

“ _How many pregnant women does it take to change a lightbulb,_ ” she starts, the noise the stairs make at her house when stepping on them distinct in Sasuke’s ear, “ _Answer that._ ” 

“ _Only one, since they can do it themselves?_ ” 

“ _And they think Itachi is the smarter one,_ ” Karin drawls, “ _Fuck, the spare lightbulbs are in the basement._ ” 

“Can’t you pee in the yard? Isn’t movement bad to you at this stage?” 

“ _Use the yard as a bathroom. And you call yourself a doctor,_ ” she mocks him, “ _I’m fine, you goof. I’m just going really slowly. S’not like I can move any faster, actually._ ” 

“So like you can become slower?” 

“ _I have a mean right hook and I’d love to introduce you to him,_ ” nevertheless of her threat, she chuckles. Her laugh carries through the call slightly faltered, so Sasuke figures she must be entering the basement and the signal’s stilted down there. “ _I’m giving Suigetsu a one-man vacuum mission when he comes back, all this dust is set to give me the worst allergy to date._ ” 

Sasuke hears the sharp noise of things falling down, hitting the floor, and he frowns, saying, “What’s that?” 

“ _Garbage I thought Suigetsu threw away when I told him to,_ ” Karin grunts, “ _Okay, this stuff’s heavy._ ” 

“What? The ladder?” 

“ _Uh-huh. There was a smaller one somewhere but I can’t find it, and_ — fuck.” 

“What’s wrong? Karin?”

“ _You son of a bitch, this is like the unlikeliest moment and yet you— fuck, oh fuck._ ” 

“Karin, answer me!”

“ _God, the fucking dam broke! I’m having the second coming of Jesus Christ right here in the middle of a dust infested hellhole of a basement, fuck, fuck, fuck,_ ”  


Sasuke gapes. His mind comes emptyhanded from any shortcoming response, a mere minute ago Karin was talking about wanting to pee, just that, how is this his life, “What, what.”

“ _Don’t you dare panic on me,_ ” Karin lets out, breathing, “ _I don’t know how dilated I am, but all hell is going to break loose if I have to deliver this child here._ ” 

“I— God, what do you want me to do?” 

“ _Call an ambulance, get me outta here, I’m not giving birth in this godforsaken place or so help me your lives will be hell, hell you hear me?_ ” 

“Okay, we’re starting with breathing exercises,” Sasuke says, standing up. He hurries to get outside the supply’s room and his face must be a damn work of art because Ino, the first one that notices him coming from the room, straightens with a scowl set in her face. 

“ _For fuck’s sake, and you actually did an ob/gyn? I don’t hear you asking for an ambulance, Sasuke Uchiha._ ” 

_Good God_ , he thinks, _are you out to get me?_

———

Karin at least doesn’t give birth to little Jun in the basement, but it’s a close thing. She also doesn’t give birth in the ambulance, but that’s all her threatening them with bodily harm if under her there isn’t a proper bed and an doctor with a certificate in delivering babies giving instructions in front of her. Sasuke kept his word, he should be staying out of this shit. 

Instead he’s looking at little Jun in the neonatal ward, the baby is out like a light and from miles away you can tell he's Karin’s little creation. He doesn’t have a single hair on his tiny head, but Sasuke can imagine a patch of wild, striking red hair sticking out in some months down the road. Sasuke calls tiny Jun a _he_ , although Karin just rolls her eyes and says her baby is gonna be whatever he wants to be, if he’s not content with a he, but it’ll do for now. Crazy, liberal woman. 

Sasuke smiles. He used to believe Karin’s first child would be his, because somewhere at the end of his residency he didn’t really envisioned himself finding someone as willing to accept and put up with his antics as she was, a person just as immersed in their shared job that rarely there could be fights because of their schedules. Then the whole Suigetsu incident happened (a kind of romantic broken arm story) and after a few years into it, Sasuke’s glad he’s there to see two of his friends start a family like that. 

He only hopes Jun doesn’t inherit his father’s atrocity as teeth, because the orthodontics privileges in the job was still staying a long while in the discussion. Seeing Jun gives him a light feeling that upturns his overall so far so shitty day, and he considers there’s no damage in paying a visit to Dr. New Mother. 

She’s staying at the hospital a day or two at most, probably at her will and only because she wants to be attended and make Sasuke do the most unrelated tasks to his job. Just as he turns left to get into the corridor of the maternity ward, Jūgo is coming from the opposite direction, adjusting the neck of his lab coat. 

“Hey, doc,” Sasuke says. He rises his fist and Jūgo meets it in the middle, bumping it. “You going to Karin?” 

“Already went, and I was promptly informed that apart from godfather, I’m the family’s pediatrician,” Jūgo says, shrugging. 

“Well, anything you spend on a gift, you’ll have it back on the appointments,” Sasuke says, walking alongside Jūgo. 

“That’s a way to look at it,” Jūgo chuckled. He shook his head, “but man, Karin’s midnight calls when she freaks out…” 

“Yeah, I know about those,” Sasuke makes a face, “the more you know, the more paranoid you are.” 

“Happens with my own kiddo, still,” Jūgo says, “It’ll happen to you, too.” 

Sasuke feigns a shudder, but doesn’t say anything against that. He stops in front of the room Karin was assigned to, while Jūgo keeps walking. “Catch you on gummy break?”  


“You own me two!” Jūgo says over his shoulder, before disappearing in a corner. 

Sasuke had been beginning his work as emergency physician while Jūgo was still in the pediatric residency, having started medicine as a mature student. He came across like someone who would fit snuggly in the orthopedics bunch, getting bones into place, and Sasuke had to pay Ino after his horse lost that race, when they all found out the newbie wanted to be a child whisperer. And some child whisperer he was, Sasuke understood with time. Jūgo has ways to soothe a hobbit horde like only Sasuke would do with candy, and anesthesia. With a sigh, he knocks twice on the wood and opens the door, sticking in his head first. 

“Are you dead yet?” he says, before entering the room. 

Karin is, predictively, reading around her clinical history. She ignores him with a huff and says instead: “This must be a three am filled chart, from that time I had appendicitis. I don’t remember saying half of this shit.” 

“That’s confidential,” Sasuke says, just to be an ass. 

“Made up things. And yeah, I spy with my little eye, medical terms having a rave here.” Karin snorts, put-upon. “This was an intern, wasn’t it.” 

“Jackpot, Dr. Hōzuki.” Sasuke snatches the chart from his hands, and Karin must have been read it from start to end already, because she lets it go far too easily. No fun in that. He settles the chart where a freshly-baby-draw-from-the-oven Karin cannot get it without rising from the bed, and sits on the chair diagonal to the bed. 

“Can’t recall Suigetsu having a medical degree, nor giving me one,” Karin said. She kept her maiden name after marrying Suigetsu, claiming the exact same thing every time someone asked. Sasuke laughed. 

“How are you feeling?” he asked, adding as an afterthought, “and don’t say something disgusting.” 

Karin rolls her eyes. “I was just gonna say, I’m feeling kinda stretched, like, a baby’s head getting everything as wide as its size, pretty life changing.” 

“Somehow, I end up knowing what I don’t want to know,” Sasuke sighed, “so, are you sore?” 

“Nah, Jun was good enough not to be a mega baby, and I’m on analgesics heaven right now. Everything looks pretty to me.” 

“Even me?” Sasuke arches a brow. 

“Babe, I’d pop out your babies in a heartbeat.” Karin, honest to God, keeps a straight face. 

Sasuke makes an ugly noise at the back of his throat, before laugh bursts out. “Fuck, that just kills my barely there desire for kids.” 

Karin’s laugh shakes her shoulders. “That’s a lie if I ever heard one. You want five blue-eyed, hair like golden daffodils, chubby little babies.” 

“And they have to be doctors,” Sasuke says, not taking offense despite himself. 

“One internist, like their godmother,” Karin states, “maybe a surgeon like their uncle.” 

Sasuke lifts a corner of his mouth, flexing his arm and resting his chin over his palm. He says out of the blue: “You’re a mom now.” 

Karin’s smile almost looks tender, or as gentle as her wicked self would be. “I’m a mom now,” she repeats, “And I’ll be the one to tell Jun about the burr hole his uncle risked doing in ER.” 

Too good to last, Sasuke thinks. “It’ll give him some ideas, I guess. He can make it a tradition.” 

———

He gets shooed off after his pager goes wild, and Minori, a new nurse, tells him she’ll let him know when Jun is going to be brought to Karin. He doesn’t want to miss the goofy faces Karin will make to her child, or the tiny voice not even she can stop from doing, but duty calls, or vibrates nonstop in his pocket, so he promises to come back and rushes to the ER. 

James and Sui are coming from the swing doors with a gurney when Sasuke meets them, he grabs a pair of gloves from a box on his way to Trauma, and as he gloves up he says, “What d’you got me?” 

James says, “fifteen year old, male, he’s been on a car accident, he’s had ten minutes of compressions, couldn’t intubate.” 

“Let’s get a bed,” Sasuke answers, “Dr. Yashiro, try on intubating now, Dr. Wakefield, keep the compressions.” 

A man has rushed alongside the doctors, he’s being held away by TenTen, and cries: “Nikki? Can you hear me? Dad’s here, Nikki! Dad won’t leave!” 

“Sir, please, we’re doing our job,” TenTen explains, restraining him from getting closer to the gurney. 

“ _Please_ , he’s just a boy— help him!” the man sobs. 

He can’t be here, and Sasuke shoots TenTen a pointed look because of that. She nods once as a reply, looks towards Hinata, and both try to get the man to leave Trauma. His last yell is: “NIKKI!” 

With his stethoscope he hears the bilateral sounds of the lungs. “It worked. Shoot an epi, one amp of bicarbonate,” he orders, looking at the VS monitor. “Get N.S. in!” 

Sasuke keeps looking at the monitor. He just needs one, one wave, to take this boy a step away from his arrested heart. Supraventricular, ventricular tachycardia, or ventricular fibrillation, right this moment he needed proof he could put back electricity in him. “C’mon, boy, give me a sign.” 

On his periphery, Dr. Wakefield’s arms move with the punishing set of the compressions; he’s heaving now, and Dr. Yashiro alternates looks between the monitor, Sasuke, and the ventilation’s bag-valve. Among the Trauma’s ruckus, the flat line in the monitor carries on like a subdued noise in the background, but minutes pass, and little by little everyone starts to settle, making the flat line become more and more loud, like a ringing alarm that gradually increases. 

Sasuke chances a look across the room. Everyone’s staring at him, at the monitor. Even Naruto has paused whatever he was doing, clutching charts in his arms; he stands out of the way but is looking at the gurney, at Sasuke. 

He feigns that Sui and James’s gazes aren’t pinned on him. He imagines no one by his side, an image that accompanies the quiet, cold and slow engulf of silence, trickling all over but the non-stop noise of the monitor. People fear bombs, heights, spiders, they are paralyzed by the horror of drowning, and they are scared in the dread of the darkness. But Sasuke’s fear resides in this— the unforgiving tale of a line that registers only towards one flat direction. 

He closes his gloved hands before he can begin shaking, and casts a glance at the clock installed above his head. 13:36. He’s been in the hospital for no more than eight hours. No other thing makes him realize how time passes and does not come back more than bestowing a sight to this clock, the one that dictates a doctor’s most intimidating, humiliating moment. Lonely, truly lonely too, an experience that carries in the depths of itself the sense of an intimate solitude, like most fears are forced to be faced: on your own. With only your name on it, as they say. 

He questions, “Any opinions?” and receives in response downturned heads, shaking heads, lamenting heads. “Time of death, thirty-seven minutes past one pm.” 

Sasuke remembers something Itachi said to him long ago, back when he was still just finding his footing at the faculty. His brother revealed the meaning beneath that words months after, but their nature only is authentically exposed when Sasuke finds himself in this sort of position. _Be sure_ , Sasuke, his brother had said, sure that this was something he wanted to do, sure he could look at the clock, sure he could hear the drop of a heart, sure he could call death but remain alive. Nothing can become surer than time and the inalterability of the flat line. 

_Be sure_ , he repeats to himself, and he still needs to fill in Itachi that he has added something else to that, too: _be sure on your own._

He throws the used gloves in the garbage bin, and gives Sui and James a blank stare. “Did you two finished charts?” Behind him, the nurses have started to take the instruments from the boy’s body. 

Sui and James share a look, but they snap out of it before it becomes too obvious. “I did,” Sui answers, frowning a bit. 

James looks sheepish. “I have a few still to fill.” 

Sasuke nods. He then nods again, almost to himself. “Okay, I’ll—” 

James starts, “the child’s father is—” 

“Waiting, yes,” Sasuke finishes, and reassures them, before he sets them to do anything else: “I’ll take care of him.” 

He looks down, focusing on a point between his shoes and the floor. Someone touches his shoulder, so he barely moves his eyes. Naruto is giving him the kind of worry look that makes wrinkles appear in his forehead. If he doesn’t stop it, by forty they’ll be permanent. “Hey. I’ll go with you.” 

Sasuke shakes his head before anything comes out of his mouth. He bites the inside of his lower lip. “It’s good,” he shrugs slightly, “It was my patient. Next time I’ll let you do the hard job, you know?” 

He uses the pause that Naruto makes to retreat, mostly because he doesn’t think he can hear what the blond has to say, and he can’t add anything of his own. _Next time, right._ He doesn’t want to do this again anytime between the last two weeks Naruto had in here. He registers pointlessly that sometime after he talked with Naruto, he had changed the crisp white shirt from this morning with black scrubs, the same Sasuke uses on ER. White's a natural enemy in ER, and most ties meet a sad ending after experiencing first-hand any gruesome case in Trauma. He hates dressing formally or expending in clothes that would be ruined at the end of the day, and is not even bothered with dress shoes or all that “medical-representation” attire jackshit, but Naruto liked to look nice for his appointments. Sasuke makes a small, humorless laugh to himself, muffled by the noise of the emergency waiting room. 

The boy’s father— Nikki's father, he remembers the man shouting it, was escorted to a more secluded area while they treated his son, and in his position Sasuke could see him through a window, though he couldn’t see Sasuke. His clothes were bloody after carrying his son’s body and his own injuries, although these rather minor. He was offered some scrubs as a change of clothes and attention to his wounds, but he refused them, and the clothes are just sitting in a chair now, untouched. Just as Sasuke comes into his point of view, he takes a step towards the crystal door, but Sasuke gets inside the room first. 

“Mr—” Sasuke starts. 

“Takasu,” the man rushes to add, “I’m Takasu.” 

“Mr. Takasu, I’m Dr. Uchiha.” 

“Yes, I know, you treated my wife a few years ago,” Takasu says. 

Sasuke doesn’t remember. Not even he can remember each face he has had across him in the ER, when that wasn’t exactly his priority. “Right,” he says at length. 

“How’s Nikki? No one will say anything to me—” 

Sasuke swallows. There are statistics that say the recovery of casualties brought to this hospital were a few points above the standard in the area, about a 15% or so he recalled. Sasuke’s own record of deaths are the lowest in the entire hospital, which somehow made the staff joke about him being a Personal Jesus, or person’s last 15% of chance. It means nothing now. He tries to find the right words, struggling internally to say: “Your son… It was already too late when he was brought in.” 

Takasu doesn’t answer right away. He stutters, “T-too late?” 

“We did everything we had on our hands. There’s only so much we could—” 

“He’s not dead!” Takasu shouts. He takes a fistful of Sasuke’s scrubs, gripping tightly. “He’s not— he’s not dead— Nikki— He looked at me in the ambulance, he can’t be dead!” 

Sasuke puts his hands over Takasu’s fists, trying to make him loosen his grasp. Takasu doesn’t yield. “Sir, we couldn’t no anything more.” _He was already dead when you set foot here._

Takasu is mute for a long, pregnant moment, the silence fragmented with his choked breathing. “He’s not dead,” the man snarls, tightening his grip, “You _killed_ him!” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, right? There must be a part three. Initially, this chapter was going to end a little different, but oh boy. Even my plans get twisted. 
> 
> Just like always, medical emergencies are based on CBS' tv show Code Black, along with the knowledge that's taking me forever to have a diploma from.


	5. In the light they both looked the same (part III)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I couldn’t shook him. I tried, Karin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slow chapter is slow, and shorter than my usual, but oh well.
> 
> Some warnings have been added, like minor character death, which consists in the patient's deaths that happen in this work. This one is a child, so you might want to read around that if it’s not something you can withstand. 
> 
> This work remains unbeta'ed.

Mr. Takasu barely restrains himself, as though he had to hold back so abruptly his body locks in tension. He only lets go of Sasuke’s scrubs when James comes into the waiting room, looking for his attending, like he remembered now they weren’t in a strictly private area. Maybe he sensed the disadvantage of beating the crap out of a doctor right in the middle of the hospital he worked in, and Sasuke reminds himself he doesn’t want a lawsuit and busted knuckles on top of his burr hole, which he believes they're going to assess at the next board’s reunion. 

He makes his way back to Trauma, leaving James to deal with the Mr. Takasu. It’s cowardice through and through, he _is_ James’ attending, but is he one to rely on when it comes to grief? Who the fuck would want any assortment of words, in the likes of an awkward consolation, from someone who saw your child die. 

In ER, Sui is also waiting for him. He tells her that Mr. Takasu needs privacy with his son, so it’s better if they arrange them a farther bed, where he couldn’t be overheard or interrupted. Sui agrees wholeheartedly, but she hesitates a little when he makes a gesture to leave, saying: “Dr. Uchiha?” 

Sasuke gazes at her. “What is it?” 

“Are you, I mean—” Sui looks briefly downwards, “are you okay?” 

He has to give her credit. She didn’t sound _too_ condescending. “Not really,” he says, lacking the energy to tiptoe around her question, or downright lie. “It’s never easy when they’re young.” 

Sasuke keeps looking at her, realizing briefly that _this is the first time they’ve have someone dying right below their hands in ER, She and James_. “Did you ate, Sui?” 

What is the thing most uncharacteristically in the breadth of that sentence, what makes Sui almost gape, Sasuke cannot exactly pinpoint. She recovers quickly with a: “I don’t even know what time is it,” which is probably the lamest thing she can come up with, but for once Sasuke humors her with only a shake of his head. She has still time to get used to have people die when you can’t do anything else, when you’ve done everything perfect, when you’ve made a mistake. Sui still hasn’t have the chance of suffering any of the three. It didn’t need to be today, didn’t need to be right now, the experience of a dead child gnawing at their thoughts, blurring away the rest; it was something not even Sasuke would want for his residents, not if he could avoid it. 

“Like I said, take Mr. Takasu to his son,” Sasuke instructs her, “then have something to eat. Tell James to eat, too. Am I clear?” 

“Yes,” Sui says, nodding. “How much time do we have?” 

“Maybe enough for a salad.” 

  


———

  


It’s not until a few hours later that he realizes he has missed Karin cooing all over Jun, after he purposely takes a few charts to do himself, a case of autolimited E. coli, one of malabsorption, two fractures, and a long checkup with a patient doing motor recovery, so Sui and James can have a proper, fully chewed meal. He in turn leaves them the whole lot of ER spring allergies, minor stitches, and two old ladies that needed thirty minutes of a doctor’s time. Nowadays, the emergency stays on enough low tide that Sasuke looks at his watch, says a heartfelt _fuck_ , and makes his way to the maternity ward. 

“I was about to call you,” it’s what Karin greets him with, but her tone is almost amicably, and that must be because little Jun is asleep in the nest of her arms. She has a faint pink tinting her cheeks, her hair braided low. So the motherhood glow actually existed, and Itachi didn’t just have been joking when he told Sasuke how their mother looked like after having him. 

“Looking good, I see,” he says, and Karin hums in response, not really paying him attention when Jun starts stirring. 

At that moment, when Sasuke slumps in the chair he used before, whatever that held him whole breaks in halves, leaving him scattered, out of sorts, like the system keeping him together has shut down. He blurts, “A child died,” and doesn’t register he has actually say it _out loud_ until Karin lifts her head, breathing: “What?”

He thinks that if he lets go fully, his muscles will start to contract on their own accord. They’re already quivering; he fists both hands so stay as put as he manages. “An hour ago,” he explains, “he was brought already flatlining. I—”

He’s not losing it. He won’t have himself _losing it_ , this is just him reacting belatedly— “I couldn’t shook him. I tried, Karin.”

“Sasuke—”

Nikki. A fifteen year old. Maybe he had a girlfriend, or a boyfriend, or someone that left him aching, or waiting. Maybe someone was waiting for him right now. “He was just a boy. Fifteen years.” 

Maybe Karin doesn’t realize it, but Sasuke sees how she tightens slightly her hold on Jun, how the circle of her arms become are little more complete. “Sasuke, breathe.” 

Sasuke arches forward, flexing over his legs. He puts his elbows over his knees, and breathes over his hands. They smell of latex. He covers his eyes with his palms, pressing the heel over them. “Itachi knew he wanted to be a doctor when he was fifteen.” 

Nikki. He couldn’t shook him, and he would never know what the fuck he wanted to be in life. He couldn’t be the brother knowing first, or last. “Karin, his name was Nikki—”

“Sasuke, look at me.” 

Something mechanical in him sets the motion before he can fully command it. Karin is standing, or she’s trying, and it’s only been _hours_ since she delivered a kid to this goddamned world, so Sasuke stands upright and is in front of her in two strides, though Karin is having none of it. “Calm down,” she demands him, and assesses him for a few heartbeats. “Here, take him.” 

“What?” Sasuke asks, nonplussed, his body not even working decently. 

“Take Jun, c’mon, lift your arms,” Karin says, spreading her arms to deposit Jun into Sasuke’s outstretched ones. His brain kicks the default, like his instincts got everything figured out ahead of the way, he folds his forearms so he can cradle Jun, letting his head rest over the crook of his left elbow. Anything that he wants to say he can’t remember how to utter it. 

“This is a child that was born,” Karin says. There are red strands curling at the edges of her face. “Nikki was one that died. You don't choose which one leaves and which one stays. Do you understand that?”

He looks at Jun, tiny in comparison with his arms. Sasuke gingerly brings him closer to his chest, and this very action reminds him a few years back, the memory of him doing exactly the same: looking back, it was a baby they had to bring to this world in the midst of the ER, they were hitting code black when the mother arrived, with contractions, and she didn’t even make it to a bed. His first winter as an emergency physician had been coming around, that included the holiday-related accidents, the havoc in traffic that delayed ambulances, the merry people that thought snow couldn’t do shit. 

What a damn freakshow that day was, Sasuke thinks. The floor had been a mess of the woman’s fluids, urine and blood and the amniotic liquid, and only due to a miracle no one ended up sliding off, with how many people were in ER at that time. At least eighty people beheld the birth, including them, and even a man had to be admitted afterwards, having faint after witnessing the labor. 

Sasuke guesses that Karin takes pity on him, carefully watching him with Jun, but staying silent. The thoughts slow down just as his frantic heartbeat subsides, only then he becomes conscious of the fact that his heart quickened, that Nikki’s death was taking hold of him, that it almost swerved out of his control right across his nose. Nikki is the seventh death Sasuke takes whole responsibility for, notwithstanding the conditions in which he was admitted: he was already dead, but Sasuke was his physician in charge. It couldn’t go in anyone’s record but his. He remembers each one of the faces, the details leading to their demises, every word he used in his reports about them. 

Sasuke looks at Jun. He tries to evoke and seize the memory of that winter, when everything could have been gone awry, but nothing ended wrong, to no avail. Nikki’s flatlining sound stays like the unending ache of a burn, it buzzes and keeps coming back, refusing to leave. When he lifts his gaze and meets Karin’s eyes, he knows she’s looking for something through him, but cannot say it out loud. Sasuke doesn’t know if she finds it.  


  


———

  


Minori comes back to take care of Jun while Karin rests, and she tells Sasuke he’s expected in ER. He reluctantly makes his second way back to emergency from the maternity ward, but he’s stopped right before the doors of ER by Tsunade, who’s blocking them.

“Sasuke,” she says, skipping the greetings, “I thought I’d find you in emergency.” 

_Where you’re supposed to be_ , she must be thinking, but doesn’t tell. Sasuke doesn’t tell her where he’s been, either, she probably already knows. “You needed me?” He offers lightly, shrugging. 

She keeps a stern gaze over him. Tsunade became the director of emergency a little over a year after he obtained his postgrad, which made him directly under her command, and like Sakura used to say when she was Tsunade’s resident, the woman wasn’t a walk in the park, by any means. “Your burr hole is going to be brought up in this afternoon’s reunion, so I expect you to be there.”

Right. He hasn’t forget about it. He puts his hands inside the pockets of his scrubs’ pants, and tilts his head towards the direction he’s heading, as a motion to leave. “Anything more?” 

She scoffs. “Nikki Takasu’s family wants an autopsy of the boy, so I need you to write the report of your findings.” 

That makes Sasuke scowl. “Why an autopsy? His father knows he was brought here with a cardiac arrest.” 

“That much I was told,” Tsunade concedes, sighing, “but he called upon his right to ask for an autopsy, even if you did not ordered it.” 

“Great,” he mutters. Tsunade doesn’t move an inch to get out of his way, instead she arches an eyebrow and crosses her arms, tapping her right one. Sasuke rolls his eyes, despite trying not to. “What?”

“Your office is the other way around,” Tsunade deadpans. 

This day wouldn’t just be over. 

  


———

  


Since he’s a wise man, and he doesn’t want Tsunade pestering him on top of everything that this day has thrown his way, Sasuke goes to his office, to write an unnecessary report for an unnecessary autopsy, knowing they’ll find what everyone already knows. It’s unlikely Mr. Takasu will find the kind of reassurance he’s probably trying to reach: Sasuke has seen that look before, the one he had on his eyes when Sasuke told him there hasn’t been anything else they could’ve done, it would be years before he embraced the closure he needed, and opening his son up wasn’t a step towards that. But stranger things have happened, so Sasuke wouldn’t take anything for granted.

In his office, he opens the bottom drawer of his desk and fishes a pack of gummies. There’s no one in sight, so he can enjoy eating his goddamn sugar without having everybody ask him if he had eat anything else. It was this or smoking, and before quitting Sakura came as close as trying to smother cigarettes in his arm. 

He turns on his computer, only to find it had been only sleeping, with a session already started. He grunts, “Naruto,” only halfheartedly because Naruto has been known his password for months, and he’s always too lazy to change it. “When you’re being paid better than me, but still won’t afford a portable,” he says, munching on a handful of gummies. 

Naruto has left all his windows opened, the twenty or so tabs he says he uses all the time, along with a few documents and his email account. He always says he doesn’t trust Sasuke enough to sync his email and just not bother with logging in every time, but a lying liar who lies, that fucker is. He probably didn’t know how to set it up. He closes the tabs, reproachful that this time Naruto hasn’t left something he can prank him with. Looking in his email, Naruto is way worse than him at keeping it neat, he doesn’t even open the firsts that sit in his inbox, among them there is one from Dr. Tsumabuki— _what?_

“Dr. Uchiha?” a voice says, making Sasuke glance towards it.

A woman with a heart-shaped face is waiting in the threshold, having opened the door. She looks hesitant, but the sign that strikes the most to Sasuke is that her green eyes are red-rimmed, and looking a bit swollen. As she approaches the desk, it becomes clear to him, like a memory brought to the forefront with a lurch. “Genevi?” he asks.

“Genevieve,” the woman corrects him, “Hi, Dr. Uchiha.” 

Genevieve isn’t alone. Behind her has been hiding a girl that Sasuke can swear is not more than four, and not only he can swear on this, he knows the very medical record of this child. She’s three, with three months to add, and next winter, on December the 29th, she will be four. Genevieve lifts the girl, supporting her with a grasp in her dainty legs. She has two ponytails made out of her thin hair, and doe eyes as green as her mother’s. 

It feels like mud sinks in the bottom of his stomach, like ice glides in the back of his neck. With a mere nod, Sasuke says, “Have a seat, Mrs. Takasu.” 

The widening of her eyes is minimal, but it’s there, like she didn’t really thought Sasuke would recognize her, but not over an hour ago he thought of delivering that same little girl as his personal reverie, saturated with a soothing effect, while he was holding Jun. Genevieve sits on the chair that Sasuke indicates with his hand, adjusting the girl in her legs. The child says, looking to her mother, “Mommy?” 

“Be still a little bit for mom, yes?” she says to the girl. 

Her name beats Sasuke, and it’s not the only thing Sasuke has forgotten. He couldn’t place Mr. Takasu’s surname, either. “What’s her name?” he asks. 

Genevieve’s smile is a bit strained, tired, but has a genuine end on it, too. “Genevieve, like me,” she says, “It’s my great-grandmother and grandma’s name, and my mom’s too, it goes about five generations. So I told Kusuo I wanted her to be named Genevieve. But that name is still a bit of a handful to her, still, so she just goes by Eve.” 

Eve is resting her head over her mom’s chest, and Genevieve brings her hand to her head, smothering any tousled strand. “She hasn’t had her afternoon nap, in no time she’ll be as grumpy as the day she was born.” 

Sasuke remembers, too. Eve’s cry was a joy for the emergency, when it was first heard, but her bawls ended up being something they could have live without, starting from the fact it prompted them to think something was wrong. It ended being that Eve was ill-tempered, and easy to be set in a crying fit, but they settled into thinking that after they’d worried all the way first. Looking at Genevieve, he knows why Eve hasn’t taken her nap. “I’m sorry, Genevieve,” he whispers. 

It takes a while for Genevieve to reply, like she’s looking for something to say, but Sasuke knows better. There’s nothing she can say that can come up past the choking feeling of this kind of loss. 

The silent lasts for as long as she looks downward. “Before having Nikki, I wanted to come back. To my homeland, I mean. I’m actually british.” 

“But then I realized I was pregnant. Kusuo was just finding stability with his job, and I wanted my son to grow with a father figure, I wanted Kusuo to be able to be a father. I couldn’t be cruel enough to deny it to any of them. So I stayed,” she continues, “years after, I had little Eve. I thought right there that I’ve made the right decision, after all that time. I— was I wrong? Would Nikki be alive if I just chose to leave, instead?” 

It’s not a question for Sasuke to have a reply for, it’s not even his right, in spite of Genevieve’s need for solace in the core of her grieving. She shakes her head, leaving no time for Sasuke to say anything, anyway. “He’ll always be my little boy. It doesn’t matter how much he stubbornly repeated he was a grown up now.” 

In his hands (his bared hands, gloveless as they are, but withstanding the fresh death of Genevieve’s very firstborn) there is very little Sasuke can do, but he stands up, reaches the door to close it with a muted click of the lock, and walks the rest of the way between him and Genevieve, crouching right before her feet. “He’ll always be your little boy,” he repeats for her. _Be sure on your own._

She needed to believe there could be a way of living past the grief. With it, if it came down like that. The tears make her eyes look like two emerald pools, bright and magnified. _She’s too young to cry for a lost son_ , Sasuke thinks, but most people ending in this kind of place were too young in one way or another for being here, regardless of their reasons.

That’s what takes for Genevieve’s tears to fall, and she whimpers, “ _Nikki,_ ” before putting a hand over Sasuke’s right shoulder. It acts as a cue for him; wrapping her with his arm as gently as he can manage comes naturally for him. Genevieve holds Eve against her chest with her arm, but circles Sasuke’s shoulders with the other. It’s an awkward position, if asked to him, but very little matters. It makes him go back, to the day Eve cried out and Genevieve fell from exhaustion, to this point, when Nikki flatline heart stayed without answering. It’s like a circle, where you can’t tell which direction you’re running to, what you’re running from. 

His lower back strains with the hyperextension he’s doing, but Genevieve’s unrelenting sobs stops him from moving further, like she’ll break if he ever so tries to accommodate an inch. Eve has no such qualms, squealing, “Mooommy, you’re squee-squinzeng me!” 

It breaks the spell if there has been any to begin with. Sasuke falls back to his heels, not knowing exactly what face he’s supposed to be making. Genevieve sniffs and rubs at her eyes, taking wide, slow breaths. “It’s squeezing, honey,” she says, his voice hiccupping. 

Eve is pouting and saying, “Sque- scu- squee-ning, squeezing,” while Sasuke thinks better of it all and makes himself useful. He gets a few tissues from the top drawer of the desk, and hands it to Genevieve. It’s clear the effort Genevieve makes at giving him a smile as a thank you, it wobbles and gets really close into being a new sob, but how she manages, that’s a wonder Sasuke can’t get past. She wipes her eyes dry, along to her runny nose. “Squeezing, Eve.” 

“Do you want to stay here? Let Eve take her nap in the couch. It’s better than a chair down there, I promise,” Sasuke says, trying to get Genevieve to focus on something else. She looks doubtful, but caves when Eve whines again, “Mommy, I’m tiiired.” 

“Just for a little while,” she assures Sasuke, “She’s taking naps shorter and shorter.” 

“I’ll get you something to eat, or a pillow, or whatever you need,” Sasuke tells her, hoping to sound practical and hide the fact that he’s the least to know what to do with a grieving mother, and it sounds like a humiliating escapade to him, but this, this right here he wouldn’t put his money on, the possibility of coming out of this unscathed, without the memory of Genevieve’s green eyes red from crying, her heart-shaped face wet, the sorrow conducted across her body, each shock worse than the one before. Without the memory of her painful Nikki. 

“It’s okay, Sasuke. I just might need someone to watch over Eve for a while, Nikki’ll be…” she swallows, “His autopsy will be soon.” 

“I’ll see what I can do,” he says, and doesn’t ask if they don’t have any relative they can trust Eve for as long as the autopsy lasts, “But Genevieve. I need to ask you something.” 

She hums in confusion. Sasuke questions her, “Aren’t you opposed to open—” he catches himself, “to do that to Nikki?” 

“I am,” she says, biting her lower lip, “But Kusuo, I don’t know. He said it needed to be done.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A vial of hope and a vial of pain  
> In the light they both looked the same  
> Poured them out on into the world  
> On every boy and every girl
> 
> — "Neon Bible" by Arcade Fire
> 
> I struggled a bit writing Sasuke in here (and I'm still not 100% sure), and with the scenes. Also, I wanted to had it longer, but anything I added was just wrong, so I let it have its way. This chapter was really frustrating.


	6. Something about us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naruto had walked from the living room to the walk-in kitchen, divided only by the tiny island. He had put a brown bag in the counter, before turning his head towards the glass doors that showed the yard. “Oh.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seems like I can only work on Miracle Aligner during my vacations— some parts had been sitting for months in my laptop! Anyway, I'll whip myself nonstop for that. For now, enjoy the update!
> 
> As always, this work is unbetaed!

Sasuke knows it took years for the seed to thrive, and he remembers that tacky, but accurate quote by Terry Prachett. Or he remembers most, obedient like corn, defiant like potatoes, very peculiar and, if asked to Sasuke, stupid in terms of placing analogies, though that did nothing to make it less appropriate. His attachment (he had years to man up and call it by its name) on Naruto— looking like an insane, unrelenting rivalry, cropped close to earth any time it seemed to grow out of control. But like a lot of seeds it flourished underground, and it did not need to meet Sasuke’s eye to be there, it did not need to be acknowledged, since Sasuke lacked the courage to affront it but did very little to stop his downward growth. 

“ _Streptococcus pyogenes_ is responsible for a percent of 15% to 30% cases of—” Naruto had stopped, narrowed his eyes, and followed with: “Of what, Sasuke?”

“Acute pharyngitis in children,” he had answered idly. 

Naruto had rolled his eyes. “So you did hear what I say, instead of just looking like a spaced out idiot.” 

“I always hear what you say,” and _no_ , he didn’t follow his choice of words. Amending as smoothly as he could, Sasuke had added, “You speak at some decibel people can’t just tune out.” 

A grumpy, “That’s the reason, of course,” had been Naruto’s reply, alongside with: “Not because I aced our last exam on bacteriology, while you barely passed, and now you need me to help you study.” 

Sasuke had shrugged. “Surgeons don’t care much about that. Internists, though…” 

“Stigma much, huh. Pass me a sheet, I’ll make you a table of microbiota and you’re going to memorize it like your life depends on it.”

His life really depended on that table, Sasuke remembers. A forty percent of the entire qualification in his following exam was made out of a blank box he was supposed to fill out with a fuckload of names, and ever since he hasn’t forgotten them. He didn’t turn out to be a surgeon, unlike Naruto as an internist, but it mattered little. That had been the first time Sasuke had glanced at the roots starting to crack the ground. 

He knows it took years, slow years for the roots to thicken and spread at every direction, like an innocuous weed that you pull out and realize then you don’t know where to start to cut, where to start digging: it’s everywhere. 

On his fifth week working as a certified emergency physician, with a paper that proved it, nevermind his incredulity, he had attended a poisoned patient. It turned out he was a landscaper (or gardener, Sasuke was struggling with the difference) bit by a snake found nestling at the bottom of some bushes he was trying to take out, but he made it, with present but reversible repercussions, mostly by luck that he received medical attention as promptly as he needed to. As a thanks, the man had gave Sasuke a handful of seeds with instructions for each of them, and almost all of them died in Sasuke’s lazy, forgetful care. The only thing that stuck was a vine that started to climb the part of the fence right in front of the yard behind his house, the northern wall, and Sasuke couldn’t remember which kind of plant was supposed to be. He had asked the man on his last checkup, and he had said it probably was the morning glory. 

The plant had managed to bloom across half of the fence, for the better part of a year, and Sasuke took it upon himself to help it as much as he could. He had asked the man for what kind of soil it needed, how much of water, if it needed additional nutrients.

Amidst his disastrous attention and with actual useful professional attention, the vines had grew and blossomed like they didn’t care Sasuke was shit at looking after them. One day, he had sat with his laptop and forty unread emails in the yard, looking absently at the morning glory (ignoring his messages), and had said, “He keeps forwarding me these boring neurosurgery articles,” while putting the read on most of the emails, he had added, “Do you think he’d survive a stroke if I show up with blood stained clothes again?” 

The flowers nor the leaves did answer him, unsurprisingly. The thirty one email had been from Naruto, the subject read: DONT IGNORE I KNOW UR PASSWORD IF U DONT ANSWER ME SO HELP ME GOD, and that signaled that the rest of the mail, predictably, was in capitals too. The following six emails were from the blond, Sasuke had skipped them all and the next one was actually from the gardener. He was the first patient Sasuke stayed in touch with, and that was because he employed the man for his own garden. The message said that he would be coming between next week and the one after that to trim the copses and coppice the trees, (Sasuke didn’t understand a thing about that, but the garden was looking pretty good after admitting he knew jackshit and didn’t have the time to actually learn, and leaving it to a professional), so they would need to schedule a day where Sasuke could be home in the morning. At the foot of the email, the gardener had wrote, «The morning glory you have in your garden is called Heavenly Blue, in case you needed to know».

He had looked at the plant, blooming steadily, the blue of the flowers splattering all across the green. It was a shade darker than the sky in the morning, not quite as soothing, but rather a radiant blue coming to life. He had thought of something that the flowers were a shade darker too, in comparison. Something more in the likes of a midday cloudless sky. For some reason, the name suited all three.

  


———

  


The morning glory had conquered fully the wall, like it owned the place, with a little help. Sasuke had refused when the gardener (Allen, that was his name) asked if he wanted to crop it, instead asking him if he could plant more. He had thought about the plant’s rebuttal at dying even when Sasuke neglected it, albeit unconsciously. He didn’t care at first, but the morning glory was part of his garden now, and he guessed it deserved to take as much space as it fancied. 

These moments were rare, but there were times where Naruto would have breakfast in Sasuke’s place instead of them going somewhere or taking it in the hospital. Sasuke, well, he showed good results if he followed instructions, when it came to cooking, so the pancakes he made that morning looked fluffy and didn’t taste all that much of egg. Naruto’s suspicion at whether he bought them or not had been completely unfounded. 

“It has been, like, eighty-four years since I’ve been here,” Naruto had said that day, “I think I’ve aged and all that.” 

“I’d say you look like a little kid to me, but you’re not one to need flattery,” he had answered. 

Naruto had walked from the living room to the walk-in kitchen, divided only by the tiny island. He had put a brown bag in the counter, before turning his head towards the glass doors that showed the yard. “Oh.” 

Over the course of the next months, with the winter fading away and spring coming to its full bloom, Naruto insisted to visit Sasuke’s yard as much as he could get away with, and that was a great amount, considering how his shifts sucked as much as Sasuke’s, but he managed to linger a bit before going both of them to the hospital or after bringing Sasuke to his house. At first, it was only due to the breakfast they had in his house at least once a week and the times he would drive Sasuke home.

But then it was a charger, the bathroom, water, a spare lab coat, a tie, until he seemed to run out of excuses and casually brought sweets with him, like it worked as some sort of exchange. Sasuke didn’t exactly mind, part of his budget for his packs of gummies went to a slightly expensive turkish coffee, and a few extra cookies on top of his usual order on that downtown bakery Itachi made him like (there was so much he could borrow from his family reunions, the bakery wasn’t exactly cheap, and Itachi made a damn better living than him). 

If asked to Sasuke that was a win-win situation any angle he looked at. He only needed to drive less than half of the time, Naruto brought a healthy percent of the breakfast, and he did make a damned mean coffee with the turkish brand. 

There was the day Naruto had walked out to the yard, like he owned the goddamn place, and sat on a chair with Sasuke in tow, two steaming cups of coffee. He looked at the morning glory like it was the first time he was admiring them. “You know, my dad loves gardening, too.” 

Sasuke had taken the seat beside him. “I don’t love gardening, Naruto,” he had said, “Allen just has a good hand.” 

Naruto had sighed, put-upon. For once, he didn’t looked like he was about to fight him on that. “My dad loves gardening,” he had repeated, daring Sasuke to say anything. That time, Sasuke only had rolled his eyes. “We used to have a garden like this one back at our first house. He watched after that damn patch of soil like money sprouted from his trees. Before he applied to work here.” 

He doesn’t remember what he had thought back then, or had said. He mostly just remembers Naruto’s quiet, quiet words, and the way he had seen towards the wall, without really seeing anything, like he was recollecting a far-off memory. “I was a brat back then. Didn’t want to leave my room, my friends, and my childhood home. The new house didn’t even had a garden big like ours, and my dad didn’t even had the time to work with that square of dirt.

“We were just settling. Now that he’s directing a program, and having back problems that he thinks his son, who’s a doctor too, cannot see,” Naruto had laughed softly, “he doesn’t really take much care of the garden, now. Still likes it, I guess, but not with hands deep in the ground, or sunburn everywhere. I don’t even know how to explain it. It’s like, he used to have this seed—”

  


———

  


The sound of wood being knocked makes him look up. Naruto is leaning against the threshold, now wearing mismatched scrubs, black pants and an eggshell blue top. Suddenly, Sasuke becomes a little too aware of the fact that he’s holding the sleeping lump of Eve, who’s sucking on her right thumb. “Hey,” Naruto says, before he pauses at the sight of the child. 

Sasuke shrugs the shoulder that Eve is not resting her head against. “Don’t ask,” he says, suppressing a sigh. “What happened to your top?” 

“A patient in floor threw up on me,” Naruto explains, looking downwards for a brief moment, as if checking if there’s still vomit over his clothes. He enters the office and takes a seat on the sofa to Sasuke’s right. “So I borrowed this one. I don’t like black too much, anyway.”

“You look like a pediatrician,” Sasuke says lightly, “do you have candy on the pockets?”

“You have gummies on your pockets,” Naruto retorts, “Are you a pediatrician now? Just wondering, from the looks of it.” 

Now Sasuke does sigh. “It’s an old patient’s kid,” he chooses to say, leaving the _she’s Nikki’s sister_ for a time where that won’t prompt Naruto to make further questions. “I’m having her while her mother gets her stuff.” 

“This is a first for me, I think,” Naruto says, “I’ve never see you with a kid before.” 

“You do know children come to ER, too, right?” Sasuke drawls, sensing where this is going. 

“Yeah, but you cradling her, like you actually _wanted to_ ,” Naruto fishes out his phone, “This goes to the wall, sorry. Well, not sorry.” 

Sasuke is not above moving so the photo ends up blurry, knowing Naruto’s standards don’t let him print something that badly taken. Even so, shifting makes Eve stir, her forehead making little wrinkles when she frowns. Naruto sees all through that. “You have no chance of getting out of it, doctor,” and he laughs.

Sasuke’s only mildly annoyed, and even that is out of habit at Naruto’s antics. “Take it before I regret it.” 

“On it,” Naruto answers, distracted. The phone makes a beep and a satisfied look spreads across the blond’s face. He keeps staring at his phone; after a long beat, his semblance doesn’t return to the slightly teasing look, rather his smile dims and his eyes dull, as though he’s realizing something he’d keep to himself. 

“Naruto?” Sasuke calls, rising an eyebrow. 

“What?” Naruto replies, but only out of instinct. 

“Are you planning to make fun of me with it? I’m growing _old_ here,” he jokes, or tries to, because it’s so unlike Naruto to not laugh at it, saying he’ll parade through the hospital with the photo already framed and will make a show of putting in on his office’s wall. He doesn’t say any of that, and Sasuke finds himself bothered further by the lack of it, than its presence before.

__

“I— yeah,” Naruto murmurs, and plasters a smile that doesn’t quite look genuine, if Sasuke knew any better. “You can tell it’s gonna be a popular one.” 

Naruto turns his head before Sasuke does, distracted as he is by Eve stirring again. Genevieve crosses the threshold, saying, “Sorry, there were people waiting outside the bathroom and can you believe I— oh,” she stops herself, and hesitantly looks between him and Naruto, “Are you busy?” 

Sasuke shakes his head, “No, it’s alright,” he assures her, “Genevieve, this is a colleague, Dr. Uzumaki.” 

Naruto stands to take Genevieve’s hand, meets her halfway just as she comes to him. “It’s a pleasure, Dr. Uzumaki.”

From his part, there’s a questioning quirk in Naruto’s eyebrow that doesn’t escape Sasuke, but he sounds as smoothly and friendly as he always does when he replies, “Pleasure’s mine, ma’am. Naruto’s just fine.”

Genevieve smiles. She looks young when her mouth curves like that, even if the smile particularly doesn’t reach much his red-rimmed green eyes, tense as she still was. “Genevieve is fine too, then.” 

Naruto retrieves his hand, putting both inside his pants’ front pockets. Silence doesn’t have time to seep in because Genevieve focus’ returns to Sasuke, saying, “I take she didn’t even wake up?” 

“Not at all, she’s a bit restless though, what with the position and the light,” Sasuke responds. He pushes his chair back when Genevieve closes the distance across the sofa and the desk, extending her arms to take Eve from him. The little girl doesn’t bother opening her eyes, just moves to better accommodate herself inside her mother’s hold. In exchange, he takes the bag Genevieve’s been carrying and deposits it over the papers on his desk. “She acts all shyly, but she’s willing to come forward for anybody that can leave her to nap as she pleases.” 

Up this close, the baby hairs that fall to the edge of her forehead look wet, and her whole face seems a bit fresher, so Sasuke assumes she must have washed the dried tears and the sweat before returning to his office. “I’m going to endure a tantrum now, because she needs to eat. She hasn’t had lunch yet, I don’t like it when she sleeps without eating first.” 

It goes unsaid the reason why Eve hasn’t eat, even when it’s almost five pm now. Genevieve hasn’t forgot it, nor she’s been deliberately neglecting; subtlety Sasuke knows she hasn’t find the time to keep her afternoon routine, to look after herself or to take care of anything, after Nikki was brought in to ER. Without someone to watch over Eve, Genevieve was doing as much as she could. Sasuke looks over her shoulder, towards Naruto. If the blond is thinking along the lines of her doing a poor job as mom, it doesn’t show in his face. 

Sasuke says amicably, “I haven’t eaten, either,” and ignores Naruto rolling his eyes, “So, we can go to the cafeteria and see if there’s anything she can eat.” 

Naruto chimes in before Genevieve says whatever she’s opening her mouth for, telling them, “I can go. I was here to see if you wanted to eat something. I can bring something for the four of us.” 

Genevieve has twisted her head to look at Naruto; she then turns to Sasuke, as if searching for his opinion. He gives her a nod, knowing Naruto wouldn’t let the offer be turned down so easily, not even from a stranger, if he thought he was handing the best option. And he is, in a way. It means Genevieve could stay and in no need to carry her child more than necessary, and Sasuke wouldn’t have to leave her alone. Furthermore, Naruto’s family is so big, full of cousins and nephews, even if he’s an only son. He would know better than Sasuke what a child would prefer to eat, if only by the sheer exposition of children throwing fits during any festivities. He’s a natural, like Jūgo, unlike Sasuke or Sakura, which handled best a kid if they were unconscious.

“Thanks, Dr. Uzumaki,” Genevieve says, tilting her head. 

“Just Naruto, remember,” the blond says, appearing humored, “I’ll be back in a few.” 

There’s a split moment before Naruto goes fully out of view, when he’s leaving, and he twists his head barely, not quite to look over his shoulder, but rather like he’s catching himself so he won’t do it— the curve his eyelashes make, the tip of his nose, and the commissure of his full lips are the only things that can be seen. It’s a pause that maybe only Sasuke realizes, and he’s unable to let the impression go even when the sound of Naruto’s footsteps is long gone, far across the corridor. 

With Naruto absent now, Genevieve chooses to settle in the sofa, letting Eve rest fully against her chest. She starts, “he looks like a good young man,” which is something funny to say, because she’s not that much older than them, but being a mother must make her pull it off. “Does he work in emergency, like you?” 

“Yeah, but he’s an internist,” Sasuke tells her, “he comes to ER to fulfill shifts, but he’s the type you make appointments to, and has to keep up with hospitalized patients.”

“So he’s different from you,” she concludes. 

Sasuke hums questioningly. “How so?”

“Well, Eve’s pediatrician told me you were the one that was there at the time she was born, since I couldn’t remember your name— you didn’t go to our room afterwards, and today he said the same doctor had… had Nikki. It was all a coincidence,” Genevieve huffs a soft laugh, “I could hardly remember while I was giving birth. He said you were always at emergency. Unlike him, that also does consultation, I assume?” 

There’s something oddly intimate in Genevieve words. In truth, it’s easy to arrive at the kind of conclusions she had, notwithstanding if she doesn’t have special knowledge about how medical branches and their schedules work. She’s just stating a plain difference between Naruto and him, regarding their jobs, but the way she talks seems as though she can tell more than that— only that she chooses to be privy about it. 

“Jūgo is Eve’s pediatrician, right?” he asks. 

Sometimes, a doctor ended up being intimate in ways not even your own family could be, your husband, or your wife, or your own child. He barely knows Genevieve, he barely knows her children, but he _knows_ her, he has _seen_ the exertion in her face, and the blood that came out of her, he has seen her legs spread, her urine coming down in rivulets over her thighs, her folds open wide to welcome new life in the most humbling miracle he had the chance to witness. 

And he has had both her children at his charge— for better or worse. It makes him wonder how in some aspects they barely scrapped at being aware of the other, yet they know each other for what very few people could be entitled to presume the same. It doesn’t make him feel closer because it’s his _job_ , to know the innermost qualities of a human, but he itches with the need to guard her, to look after her, be it duty or a sense of indebt or whatever he can’t place a name to. 

She did sought him out, not to scream at his face at expense of him being directly implicated in her son’s death, but for something else she doesn’t tell and he doesn’t even begin to understand. Maybe it’s the same as the moment he searched for solace within the memory of Eve’s birth, maybe she’s here because of that, too, and he wants her out of grief’s reach because just as much as she, he wants to protect the memory. 

“Yes,” she says, smoothing down stray hairs behind Eve’s ear. “He told me about you, and where I would find you. I had to… Be away from my husband for a bit.” 

Sasuke only dares to nod. Mr. Takasu was already deeply in his own hole of loss, and anybody that reached a hand inside would be dragged in for a while. Genevieve seems like she cannot afford that to happen, yet, not when there’s a little kid in need for normalcy. “I’ll go with you to Nikki’s autopsy, after we eat and I hand over a report.” 

Genevieve murmurs, “Okay.” 

  


———

  


Dr. Tsumabuki had graduated two years ahead of them, but he did not enroll in the internal medicine program before Naruto. Sasuke knows the exact details because Naruto wouldn’t shut up about him, the older student crush he carried the better part of their first years in med school. Somewhere in the last year Tsumabuki had before his graduation, Naruto and he had forged a strange friendship, very unlikely when it came to the fact that they didn’t share a single class in their schedule, but Naruto had outgrown his infatuation and Tsumabuki seemed less inclined to treat him as a childish admirer. 

They had started dating six months after Naruto and Tsumabuki became something more than acquaintances, even Sasuke figured a similar outcome because, let’s be real, Naruto didn’t really got over that crush, and he was damn persuasive if he wanted to be. He didn’t even seemed sheepish when he told them (Sakura and him) about his date, after stuffing his mouth full saying he came through that. That didn’t matter, or so Sasuke keeps telling himself— after his graduation, Tsumabuki had been accepted as a volunteer doctor at _Doctors Without Borders_ , and not even Naruto’s stubbornness could make the both of them survive through a barely there communication, months of radio silence, and the amount of incertitude you would be having knowing the kind of conditions DWB tended to work within. 

Naruto had took it in stride, or he did after a while, even when Tsumabuki had been the first partner he ever introduced to his parents— Kushina and Minato were forgiving, but Sasuke was less so. He had to live with Naruto moping afterwards, sullen and quiet and furious at the way life was, he had to endure his breakup as much as Naruto did.

Sasuke just thinks it doesn’t make sense, but to an extent it does, of course: Naruto never wanted to lose connection to begin with, and Tsumabuki would be complacent even after their fall through. 

He had been printing a copy of Nikki’s autopsy for Tsunade when he had seen Naruto’s email was still open. Very deliberately he didn’t read Tsumabuki’s email, although it was already opened; Naruto has read it already, it seemed. 

Shortly after he makes his way to Tsunade, leaving Genevieve to her own devices for a while. Tsunade is reading a chart when she lets Sasuke in, not bothering to look up. She does when Sasuke harrumphs, looking over the rim of her glasses which sit low in the bridge of her nose, and there’s a mild irritated twitch in her mouth. 

“Here’s the report,” he says. After three years, Tsunade was none more digestible. He’s used to her, anyway, and her put-upon sighs. She takes the sheet and settles it on top of a small column of folders.

“Very well,” she replies, “Get back to ER, then. I don’t want you wondering around the rooms. You’re not the one with maternity leave.” 

Sasuke barely suppresses a snort. They both know that if he’s to get any free time, he´ll be back with Genevieve and Eve (he wouldn’t put past Tsunade to already know about her), or Karin and Jun. He nods anyway, blanking his face. “Yes, doctor.” 

It’s not a mocking tone if he’s not smirking, right?

Tsunade rolls her eyes. “Dismissed,” she waves her hand. Even if theirs wasn’t the best relationship known in the hospital (their temperaments were a bit too similar for that), it was Tsunade who handed him the pamphlet of _do you have what it takes to be an emergency physician?_ , she was the one that said, without a pinch of praise, _an opportunity amidst a family full of surgeons_. He still has that pamphlet, worn out, wrinkled, and with a corner folded. He remembers how Sakura would try her hardest best not to cry at the time Tsunade kicked her out of theater, her face a blotched, humiliated red, and how now she stands proudly amongst the youngest surgeons born and made under Tsunade’s wing. 

Duty, frustration and gratefulness is what makes Sasuke put up with the likes of her. He’s almost leaving when she speaks again, “Sasuke, one more thing. Tell Naruto to get here on your way down,” she’s looking at him intently, “And before you disappear again: Mr. Takasu asked to have the autopsy postponed. It’s likely it’ll be tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. ” 

Sasuke blinks. There’s not any need for Mr. Takasu to be there, but he’s in no position to argue against it. He makes a half-assed salute, says, “Alright,” and dutifully he goes, if not a little reluctantly. 

There’s no subtle way to ask Naruto about Tsumabuki, not when Sasuke wasted no opportunity to show his less than acquiescence regarding him, by all means he wasn’t going to act content around him or during his absence. He comes up with the certainty that Naruto cannot be offended upon Sasuke reading his email by accident if he blatantly leaves it open, and don’t get him started on the fact that Naruto liked to ignore other simple boundaries, like strolling unannounced in his office. The argument is halfheartedly made in his head as he walks to Naruto’s office, located deeper in the same corridor as Tsunade’s, so he’ll stop by briefly, he says to himself. At the door he knocks the wood twice, because he has manners unlike Naruto, and he promptly interrupts the laughs inside by entering. 

He doesn’t need to make any remark about Tsumabuki, doesn’t need any innocuous commentary nor to start an argument because he’s _right across him_ , the same height as Sasuke, slightly broader, his hair chestnut and his eyes a gentle, full of a good humored grey, almost light blue. _Like an overcast sky_ , Naruto once had said, stupidly dreamily. Sakuke knows he doesn’t frown, but it’s a near, near thing.

“Dr. Tsumabuki,” he greets him, extending his hand. Tsumabuki shakes it with a condescending tilt of his head. 

“Dr. Uchiha, it’s been a while,” he says, and over his shoulder Sasuke can see Naruto squinting at him. Tsumabuki might be older than them; regardless of his time as volunteer, war and disease or not, he’s their junior when it comes to their experience as specialists. If that’s a little too cheerful thought, Sasuke makes sure he keeps it to himself, “How’s it been?” 

“Good,” Sasuke says noncommittally, and that’s the end of anything he wants to say to Tsumabuki. Except not, there’s a few things still, but he guesses he can’t say it and leave without starting the Third World War. So he keeps on, “How’s the _Médecins_?” 

Tsumabuki arches his right eyebrow, a corner of his mouth twitching, like he’s confused. “They’re good, bound to work as always,” he replies, adding: “Though I haven’t work with them the last years.”

It’s Sasuke turn to be confused. “You weren’t, huh,” he paused, realizing he forgot what country Naruto said Tsumabuki was sent to, and he continues awkwardly, “Away?”

“Not for a long while,” Tsumabuki chuckles, “Not quite outside Japan, at least.” 

_What?—_ “Right,” Sasuke concedes, and this time he directs his eyes more than just a few seconds towards Naruto, who looks like he’s holding something back, again. 

“He’s been doing the internal medicine program at my dad’s hospital,” Naruto supplies unhelpfully, grimacing a little when he realizes his choice of words, but Sasuke doesn’t blame him, anyway. He refers to the clinic Itachi worked for as _Itachi’s clinic_. “He finished before enrollment began.” 

It fits the puzzle so brazenly Sasuke would bet his right arm for it, he knows he’s as right as his limbs are safe when he points out, “You’re Naruto’s replacement.”

Tsumabuki’s smile makes his dimples appear, Sasuke knows that Naruto knows he has dimples. “I want to be,” he says, in a gesture of humility, “I’m having my evaluation in a few days. I reckon we’ll see each other in ER, don’t we?” 

“Yes,” he says at length, biting the inner side of his cheek, “Of course. I’ll see to it that my shift gets scheduled that day, to give you a grand tour.” 

Tsumabuki’s face contorts to something like gratefulness, but it does so only partly, because Sasuke doesn’t buy the way his eyebrows lift to feign delighted surprise. If anything, his smile is as bold as ever, the fucking nerve of him to— “Then, I take this as my cue to leave. I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow, yes, Naruto?” 

“Yes, Anuar,” Naruto says mildly, not quite meeting neither of their eyes. 

Sasuke beats Tsumabuki for the door. When he turns, he gives his front to the wall full of frames, for a brief moment. But the wall is no longer cluttered with pictures, it’s beige and has marks where the frames has stopped dust from settling in. The sudden reality of it trickles inside Sasuke like a sip that has gone the wrong pipe, if he’s to account the fact that he feels like he cannot breathe. All the same, his voice comes tempered when he says, yet still looking at the wall: “Tsunade asked for you, Naruto.” 

  


———

  


When he returns to his office, the door is closed and locked, and he’s grateful he didn’t leave the keys in his bag. No one is inside, which he thinks explains why the door was locked, so it must mean Genevieve leaved and closed behind her. Surely her husband must’ve come for her, saying that he had the autopsy postponed. Maybe, like her, he was worn out and wanted to take their daughter home, at least. 

Sasuke— well, he’s sort of lost, and his head is starting to ache again, and it’s seven pm and he left his residents in ER hours ago, surely if any serious case strolled in they would page him, but the day has turned into night already and it has been a really fucking grueling day, and he’s in for a twenty-four hour shift. He really, really doesn’t want to find out what the sadistic entity in charge of his life has prepared for him in the following hours, because so far it has _sucked_. 

And he really, really doesn’t want to work with Tsumabuki, because he’s a goddamn know-it-all, he broke Naruto’s heart in the most dramatic and ridiculous of ways, by leaving, who does that? 

He doesn’t want his residents to be ordered around by him, doesn’t want him as a figure to look up at for them, Sasuke knows _he_ is not a good example either, but he doesn’t. Fucking. Care. He cards his fingers through his hair, almost yanking, because he can’t envision himself alongside Tsumabuki, knowing he had his share of Naruto and he sure took advantage of that, only to leave him behind— just like Naruto is leaving Sasuke behind, out to dry, taking his pictures, his frames, and his breakfasts and his intelligence, his ethics, his morality, his downright brilliance, taking with him the way he makes Sasuke forget all of his misgivings when he sees someone like him working like it’s his second nature, and he doesn’t want to be left bereft of his prairie eyes. It’s fucking stupid to think like that, Naruto’s not going far, but it’s as though Sasuke’s time has ran out now, he might have caught the opportunity of studying his specialization, but this one, this one went out of his hands before he could seize it. 

  


———

  


Sipping from his cup, or touching a flower, Sasuke doesn’t recall, Naruto had said: “Like he sowed but didn’t stay around long enough to reap.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need you more than anything in my life  
> I want you more than anything in my life  
> I'll miss you more than anyone in my life 
> 
> — "Something About Us" by Daft Punk


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